Laughing As I Pray
by Mikkeneko
Summary: When word came to Asgard that Loki is still alive - and on Earth - it was probably inevitable that Thor would go looking for him. Sequel to Cover Up the Sun; Thor & Jane, Thor & Loki, reconciliation, family.
1. Prologue

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Author's Notes:** Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to _A Villain State of Mind_ and directly follows _Cover Up the Sun. _

When word came to Asgard that Loki is still alive - and on Earth - it was probably inevitable that Thor would come looking for him.

* * *

><p>A month had passed since the Dark Elf invasion of Asgard, but it felt like it had been so much longer than that. So much had happened in the past month - and, indeed, in the weeks leading up to it - that Thor had hardly known a moment to stop and catch his breath.<p>

It had all started with Loki's appearance on Midgard, crazed and power-hungry and spearheading an assault by creatures from beyond the Nine Realms. Then, just when matters on Midgard were settled and Thor had sought to return to Asgard with Loki in tow, something had gone wrong - and Thor had been returned to Asgard, alone. Loki had been left behind.

There had been no time to go back and correct the mistake, because Thor had landed in the middle of a battle: the forces of Svartalfheim, led by the dark elf Malekith the Accursed, had laid siege to the golden realm. The lands surrounding the walled city had been laid to waste, their defenses crippled; worst of all, a strike team of dark elves had wormed their way into the very heart of the citadel and murdered Asgard's queen, Thor's mother.

Up until then his father Odin had been leading the defense, but after the death of Frigga, Odin had crumbled. In the hours following her death he had barely moved from her side, barely spoken, given no commands or orders - and that evening he had gone to his chamber and not emerged, slipping instead into the Odinsleep. All the burdens of command, of the defense and ruling of Asgard, had fallen to Thor.

In a desperate hour Thor had sought the aid of Loki, still held captive by the humans of Midgard, and in a desperate hour Loki had come in answer to his call. With his advice and spellpower they broke the siege, drawing Malekith away from Asgard and out into the dead plains of Svartalfheim, where he could be destroyed.

And Loki had fallen along with him.

Since then Thor had thrown himself into the aftermath of the terrible siege: clean-up, reconstruction, seeing to pensions for the wounded and the families of the dead, overseeing recruitment and training to fill the gaps - too many - left in the ranks of the Einherjar. Odin still had not awakened, and it was easier to bury himself in all the small details of recovery than to dwell on the deaths of his mother and brother.

It was hard enough to lose his mother, for she had been a cornerstone of his world - but she had died a glorious death in battle and been dispatched to Valhalla, her spirit rising to join with the stars. It was the proper way of things, Thor knew, that parents should lead and not follow their children into the next world. At her funeral Thor had lit the arrows for the pyre-boat, and wept in the reflection of the flames on the water, and said his farewells.

There had been no funeral for Loki, and that still bothered Thor. Everything about Loki - from his fall, to his unexpected re-emergence on Midgard, his betrayal, his reluctant return to fight back-to-back with Thor again - everything about Loki was wrong, everything out of its proper order. It gladdened Thor's heart that they had been reconciled at the end, Loki dying in a brave and glorious sacrifice, giving his life to protect his brother and avenge their mother - but.

But Loki's body had been lost to the collapsing of the dark world, and there had been no corpse to lay in a funeral ship for Loki. In his private heart Thor admitted to himself - though he felt guilty doing so - that he would rather Loki still lived, even mad and evil and Thor's sworn enemy, than that he should die bravely and well and be lost to Thor for ever.

Thor walked along the road towards the Bifrost observatory, enjoying the beauty of the starry causeway rebuilt. With the return of the Tesseract a month ago, they had finally been able to start repair on the great bridge; as of a week ago it had finally become usable once more, opening the pathways of the universe to travellers again.

"Hail, Heimdall," Thor called out as he stepped off the end of the bridge into the Observatory. Even while the bridge was broken Thor had visited often, asking Heimdall for news of Midgard, of the friends he had made and left behind there. "You sent for me?"

Not an hour gone, a messenger had come to the throne room - where Thor still sat on a camp stool on the dais beside the throne, refusing to take it for himself - with word from the Gatekeeper, that he had some news to impart to Thor.

"Aye, my prince," Heimdall said in his slow, sonorous way. It was at Thor's insistence that his subjects still refer to him as prince, and he had planned no coronation ceremony - for as far as he was concerned, Odin was still the king, and he was merely overseeing things in the meantime. "I have news."

Thor waited, but Heimdall did not seem to be in a hurry to impart his news. "Good news, or bad news?" Thor prompted him.

"Whether it is good or bad is not for me to judge," Heimdall said thoughtfully. His golden eyes slid over to Thor, pinning him in place. "Last night as I was watching over the Realms, something out of place on Midgard caught my eye. I looked more closely and in the wooded slopes far from any city I saw Loki, locked in combat with warriors of Midgard."

"What -" Thor broke off as the rest of Heimdall's words sunk in. "You mean, Loki is alive?" he said hoarsely.

"He did seem to be, yes," Heimdall replied. "My window of sight was brief; he quickly hid himself again. But I have no reason to believe he has left the planet."

A wave of feelings crashed over Thor, momentarily overwhelming him far beyond his capacity to immediately respond. His first and strongest reaction was relief, an unutterable joy. Loki was alive. Loki was not dead. Not all of Thor's family had been lost to him; not all his loved ones had passed beyond his grasp. He had another chance, one more chance to finally make things right between them, make things whole. Loki was alive.

Right on the heels of that joy, mixing with inextricably, was fury. It was a firestorm inside his head, a hurricane lit red with rage. Loki had _tricked_ him. Loki had _lied!_ How _dare_ he, after everything that had passed between them - how dare he take the trust Thor had extended to him again and again, long past his deserving of it, and trample it so? How _dare_ he run off and vanish now, leaving Thor alone in what should have been their shared hour of grief?

The third thought that passed through his head, quenching the red blaze of fury as it passed, was a certain rueful resignation. _I probably ought to have seen this coming._

He knew, none better, what Loki was like; how rarely with him was anything as it seemed. He had already thought Loki dead once, and been wrong; he knew that Loki's position in Asgard was fraught and tenuous, and that his brother was less than enthusiastic about returning. He knew there had been no body, no proof of the death aside from what his own eyes had seen.

But he had swallowed the lie because it was the lie he wanted to believe; Loki remorseful, Loki brave and honorable and self-sacrificing, exchanging words of forgiveness and reconciliation with him before dying honorably in combat. And no doubt Loki had known that of him, and had counted on it to make his escape clean.

And now this. Loki on Midgard, again? Loki battling with the warriors of that realm? It boded ill, and worse than ill, if Loki was up to his own tricks again. And yet - and yet. Up until now there had been no ill rumors of his brother's return. Perhaps there was some harmless explanation for this.

It was a long time before he was able to speak again, and Heimdall waited patiently while he struggled with his wayward emotions. "What will you do, my prince?" the Gatekeeper asked him.

Thor frowned deeply, gnawing absently on the side of his thumbnail. "I know what I want to do," he said reluctantly, "but I also know what it is my duty to do, and the two are not in accord. I cannot leave the throne of Asgard unattended, merely to traipse off to Midgard on a quest that may prove fruitless -"

Heimdall chuckled, breaking into Thor's indecisiveness. "Prince Thor, sometimes I forget that you are yet young by the measure of our realm," he said, "and you do not remember the early days of your father's kingship. In more recent years, aye, he has settled down and spent most of his time in Asgard; but in the days of old he wandered far and wide, throne or no throne. He was out of Asgard as often as he was in it, and the Realm Eternal was able to cope with his absence for a few weeks or months at a time."

Thor stared at Heimdall, his hopes rising. "You mean to say -"

"That Asgard is recovering well," Heimdall replied, "and not in need of babysitting. If you wish to go to Midgard - if you think yourself the best person to unravel the latest schemes of your brother - then go. If there is any urgent matters that cannot wait for your attention, I will send word."

Thor smiled, his heart lightening as he took Heimdall's words to heart. "Then I will do so," he said. Already his mind was racing over plans and contingencies - with the time difference between Midgard and home, he need not worry about hurrying back. He would have time to go see Lady Jane, and his shield-brothers as well - indeed, it would be wise to see them first. They would need to know the news about Loki, if they had not already heard from their own sources, and perhaps he could coordinate their knowledge with his own.

There was no time now to enjoy the sights on the walk back from the Bifrost. Thor lifted his hammer and flew like an arrow back towards the palace, already making preparations in his heart and mind to see Loki again.

* * *

><p>~to be continued...<p> 


	2. Chapter 1

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Author's Notes:** Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to _A Villain State of Mind_ and directly follows _Cover Up the Sun._

_Thor continues in his quest to get some straight answers out of _somebody.__

* * *

><p>The roar of the Bifrost died away, and Thor rocked on his feet and steadied his stance as he looked around him. He was not entirely sure <em>where <em>he was, aside from Midgard. Heimdall had given him the coordinates of the place where Loki had last been seen, but Thor thought it was wiser to consult with his allies first. In pursuit of such, he had asked Heimdall to set him down as near as possible to the last known sighting of Nicholas Fury, Shield-Commander. And here he was, definitely back on Earth, but with no stern-faced commander in sight.

He appeared to be in a desert or scrubland, gravel and light dust under his feet and a wide blue sky with bare wisps of clouds overhead. Thor had noticed on his past visits to Midgard that most of the land outside of the big cities was like this, barren and rocky and inhospitable. It really was impressive that starting from such poor soil, the Midgardians were able to rise as far as they had. Ahead of him rose a bank of dry stone cliffs, crumbled and broken along the front face with oddly regular striations of color in the rock. At the foot of the cliffs, nestled against the majestic stone formations, sat a small building the same color as the sand around it: blocky, gray and dull in the manner of Midgardian buildings.

It was clearly a fortress, designed to repel unfriendly assault: and, Thor reasoned, since Heimdall had seen fit to set him here, Commander Fury and his forces must be in residence. After another glance around for any sign of life - and seeing none - Thor shrugged and strode towards the shadowed entrance.

A short way into shadows under the overhang, Thor found the passage blocked by a set of heavy iron doors. He gripped the edge of one and hauled it aside; it was heavy, but after a moment of resistance it gave way with a protesting screech of metal. Only after he had pushed the door aside did Thor notice the torn, hanging edges of several chains and padlocks that had been holding the door shut.

The room beyond was lit by a faint blue glow, emanating from small light displays set into the walls. As Thor stepped forward, the blue glow from one of them intensified and there came the humming noise of increased power flow.

"How was the drive from Istanbul?" asked a disembodied voice.

"I did not come from there," Thor replied, somewhat confused by the question. He waited a few more moments to see if the voice would respond - to see if it was, as in Stark's tower, a clever self-thinking computer - but when no answer followed, he shrugged and stepped forward again.

A loud buzz filled the air, and a feeling as though the air in front of him had thickened, but Thor ignored it as he pushed forward. He had come to see Commander Fury, who must be in this building, and he did not intend to let any mindless automaton stand in his way. The door at the end of the room was much sturdier than the one on the outside had been, and guarded by a blank glass panel; Thor raised one hand towards it and electricity sparked and spat between his hand and the panel. Half of the blue lights in the room went dead, and Thor grasped the handle of the door and pulled. There was a grinding noise and the door wrenched open, half of a metal bolt sheared off from the lock, and Thor stepped past it into the next room.

This chamber was empty of people, but not completely dark; a few cool artificial lights illuminated the scene. He was in a large lobby that extended deep into the hillside, like a wide hall with doors and corridors branching off on either side. The walls were painted a cold, sterile white, with lettering and symbols stenciled onto the doors. Thor glanced at the nearest one to his left; it had the letters 'T.A.H.I.T.I.' written across the portal, though the word it spelled meant nothing to him.

"Freeze!" barked an unfamiliar voice, and Thor turned around to see a squad of uniformed Midgardians hurrying up the hall from the other direction. Leading them was a woman in a deep navy uniform with metal decorations, brown skin wrinkled and lightened from age but with no hint of give in her dark brown eyes. She glared at him from atop the sights on her small, hand-held projectile weapon; behind her several men arranged themselves in cross-fire positions with considerably larger-barrelled weapons.

None of them particularly bothered Thor; he knew there were very few weapons on Earth that could prove more than temporarily annoying to him. But here were his allies, men and women of SHIELD, who could surely provide him with the direction he sought. He turned towards them and tried a winning smile. "Greetings, my friends," he said. "I am in search of Shield-Commander Fury. Can you take me to him?"

The woman ignored his question, circling cautiously around him as more SHIELD agents came pouring out of doors and elevators. "How did you get in here?" she demanded harshly. "Who let you in?"

"I let myself in," Thor replied.

This elicited a scowl from the dark woman. "This facility requires level nine clearance or higher," she snapped. "You shouldn't even know this place is here, let alone have been able to get past the security!"

Thor scowled. As crown prince of Asgard, guardian of the Nine Realms, he felt he had more than sufficient 'clearance' to enter any facility he pleased. "Your mortal secrets do not interest me," he said shortly, struggling to keep his temper. "I wish to speak with Nick Fury. I have news for him that he will wish to hear."

"You're not going to be speaking with anyone!" the woman replied. "You're going to be taking a march into a secure cell until we find out how you learned about this place, and then -"

"Careful how you speak, mortal," Thor growled, his hand moving to Mjolnir's haft. "I have been polite so far, but I will not stand for threats or insults to my person. Watch your tongue, or else you will face the Mighty Thor uncloaked!"

She started, eyes going wide, although the aim of her handgun did not waver. "Thor?" she said in surprise. One hand reached for a small black device on her belt; Thor's eyes narrowed on it. "But that's -"

She broke off as another door opened at the end of the corridor, bright cold light flooding the hallway from beyond it. Briefly silhouetted against the entrance was a tall man with a sweeping length of coat; Thor caught a brief glimpse over his shoulder of a large round room with many curving glass panels set along the top half. Then the door hissed shut and the figure was striding off down the corridor towards them. "That won't be necessary, Sergeant," he called to the woman, who scowled but dropped her hand. "I'll take things from here."

"Commander Fury," Thor said, the smile returning to his face as he turned to greet his comrade in arms. "It is good to see you again. Your followers could use a method in manners."

Fury stopped walking and stood with his head thrown back, hands linked behind his back. He heaved a deep exasperated sigh. "Well, what did you really expect?" he demanded. "When you turn up on Earth again without warning, and break into a highly secured facility without permission? You're just lucky they didn't shoot first and ask questions later."

Actually, it was _they_ who were lucky they did not try such a foolish course of action, but Thor diplomatically did not point that out. "I wished to speak with you," he said instead.

"This is really not the right place, and really not a good time," Fury said, "but I see I'm not going to get rid of you otherwise, so let's step aside for a moment."

He turned and strode off, making a few sharp gestures to the agents filling the hallway; slowly and unwillingly they melted away, except for one young woman who attached herself to Fury's side and silently accompanied him. Feeling somewhat put out, and baffled by the cold reception, Thor followed along behind.

Fury led him through a hallway and a door to a small, cramped room mostly taken up with a desk and some filing cabinets. There was one chair on either side of the desk; Fury gestured to one while sliding into the other. "Sit down," he ordered. "I'm in the middle of a very delicate matter right now, Prince Odinson, but I think I can give you ten minutes."

Somewhat annoyed at being ordered around, Thor unwillingly slid into the chair. It was not that Thor was unaccustomed to getting a brusque reception, but only among enemy or neutral territories, not from allies. He was here for important matters, he told himself; this was no time to let little insults get under his skin. Offering a conciliatory note, he said, "Do you need my aid to defeat this great foe?"

Fury snorted. "Thanks but no thanks," he said drily. "This isn't exactly a situation that calls for a lot of hammer-smashing."

Thor furrowed his brow - in his experience, there were very few foes that could _not_ benefit from the judicious application of Mjolnir, sooner or later in the process. But this was Fury's home planet and his facility, and Thor had guest-obligation to consider.

"So," Fury said, shuffling a few papers around on his desk. "What brings you back to Earth, Your Highness?"

That got Thor back on track. "I have grave news," Thor told the Commander. "My brother has been sighted again on Midgard, alive."

He had expected many possible reactions to this news - anger, maybe fear. Loki had, after all, brought a whole hurricane of trouble down on this planet the last time he'd been here - and even after he was brought low, Fury had been given charge of keeping him prisoner, a task which had brought him no joy. He could not possibly look forward to such duties again.

The reaction Thor did _not_ expect was the one he got; a resigned shrug of the shoulders and an unconcerned "Yeah, we know."

"You - _you knew?"_ Thor's hands clenched on the arms of the rickety chair he was seated in, threatening its structural integrity. "How did you know? How _long_ have you known? Why didn't you _tell us?"_

"We've known for about a week, so not long at all" Fury answered, "and as for telling you - _how_ would we have done that, exactly? We still don't exactly have a reliable way of getting hold of you, what with you living on another planet and all. Apart from Jane Foster's micro-wormhole signal generators - which only work forty percent of the time, by the way - you're completely inaccessible to us. Last time there was a crisis - same as this time - you just showed up."

These were truths, if not especially palatable ones, so Thor exhaled slowly and forced himself to let go of the chair. "Understood," he said, a little more gruffly than he would have liked. He cleared his throat and said in a more normal tone of voice, "So... shall we join our forces together once again?"

Fury was watching him across the table, in a flat, unnerving way that reminded him of Heimdall. "To do what?" he asked.

The question astounded Thor; he made a frustrated gesture with both hands. "To thwart my brother's evil schemes and return him to Asgard, of course!" he exclaimed.

Fury sighed. "Much as I like the prospect of Loki fucking off back to Asgard," he said in an almost wistful tone, "that's not looking likely this time around. I doubt he'll go anywhere without a fight. And SHIELD doesn't need another war on its hands right now."

"War?" Thor sat bolt upright in alarm. "What do you mean, war? Has my brother gathered together another army?"

"Eh..." Fury waved vaguely in the air in front of him. "Sort of. He's allied himself with the mutants, pretty firmly it looks like. And that places him strictly outside of SHIELD jurisdiction - our hands are tied."

_"Mutants?"_ Thor repeated, baffled. The All-speak translated the word readily enough, "the changed ones," but that somehow seemed insufficient. From the way Fury spoke of them it sounded like he was referring to a very specific group of people, and also like invoking their name should explain everything. But for Thor, it explained nothing. "What..."

"Look," Fury interrupted him. "As nice as it is to have you back on Earth, I've got to get back to work. Coming to earth may be a holiday for you, but it's still a Monday for the rest of us. I haven't got time to play tour guide right now."

Thor was by now thoroughly confused. What could possibly be more urgent to the Shield-Commander than the possibility of Loki turning another army of monsters loose on his defenseless population? Could it be that he somehow hadn't understood Thor's warning, or that they were talking about two different things? But what about the situation could there possibly be to misunderstand?

Perhaps Fury was not the man Thor needed to be speaking to after all. Perhaps there was no need, or no point, in waiting for Fury to muster his troops; perhaps Thor ought to speak to Midgard's mighty warriors directly.

"Very well," Thor said. "I must return to Asgard eventually, but not yet. While I am here, I would see my shield-brothers again, the Avengers."

"Clint and Natasha are out on a mission; can't help you there," Fury replied, giving a brushing-gesture of his hand across his desk. "Stark is in his tower, fucking around as usual. Bruce's location is classified, where by classified I mean he's also camping out in Stark tower. And before you ask -" his brows drew down into a glare as he growled, "there is to be NO sparring with the Hulk in New York City. Or state, for that matter."

Thor grinned sheepishly, settling back into his chair as though he hadn't been about to suggest that very thing. Fury continued down the roster. "Rogers is in his apartment, in Queens. You have a standing invitation from here to go there, by the way, if you ever came back to Earth," he added offhandedly.

That was good news. Thor had been looking forward to seeing his comrades again, and Steve Rogers more than most. They had little time to get to know each other during the events of the Battle of New York, but battle forged deeper bonds between men than idle past-times could. Steve had struck him as a fine upstanding man, a proud warrior and a charismatic leader of men. It pleased him to hear that Steve had invited him to his dwelling.

"Then I will speak with the Captain first," Thor said aloud, "and go on to see Jane as I may."

"Good," Fury said. "Great. That's a plan. Now get off my base."

Still fuming somewhat over being dismissed abruptly as a servant, Thor did.

* * *

><p>At Maria Hill's sharp plea, Thor did not fly himself from the desert stronghold to the great city of New York, where Tony Stark and Steve Rogers both lived. Instead of letting Mjolnir carry him, he suffered to be put into one of their small metal craft; it stank, rattled noisily and flew interminably slow, but it got him to his destination just as well in the end.<p>

One of the ubiquitous SHIELD agents must have called ahead, because a familiar man was waiting at the edge of the small asphalt field where they set down. It took Thor a moment to recognize the Captain out of his armor; he was startled by how _young_ the mortal appeared, especially when his face lit up with a boyish smile upon seeing Thor.

"Thor!" Steve advanced towards him, one hand held out in front of him; Thor strode towards him with a grin and clasped his wrist in the warrior's grip. "Welcome back to Earth. Or should I say Your Highness?" he added, a small worried wrinkle forming between his brows.

Thor laughed. "Nay, to those who have spilled blood beside me in battle, I am only Thor."

"Well, it's good to see you again. We didn't really get much of a chance to talk last time, what with the invading armies and all. I was sorry that I didn't get a chance to know you better."

As far as Thor was concerned, bonds formed much more quickly and deeply in the shared song of battle than sitting around in idle chatter, so he felt like he already knew the other man quite well. "I am honored by your invitation, Captain Rogers."

"No, no," the boy said with a quick smile. He deepened his voice as if in imitation of Thor's, a playful smile on his lips. "Those who fight beside me in battle can call me just 'Steve.'

"Steve, then," Thor said with an answering smile.

"Right, but I shouldn't just keep you talking on the tarmac." Steve said, and gestured to the street behind him. "Let's go back to my place. It's not far."

Steve's place turned out to be a small set of rooms in a crumbling, to Thor's eye shoddy building of brown stone and yellowed plaster; despite the weathered outsides, the interior was snug and sound, and kept scrubbed to a military cleanliness. Thor could tell immediately that the style of furniture and decorations in these rooms was very different from that of the world around them, and remembered what he had been told about Steve Rogers' dislocation through time. There was a weapons-rack on the door, and Thor hung Mjolnir on it as he went, as a proper guest should to show peaceful intentions to his host.

"Welcome to my place," Steve said, turning on wall sconces as he went. "Sorry if it's not, you know, what you're used to."

Thor turned away from his interested inspection of the view. From here, the damage to New York City done by Loki's invasion was not visible. "I am very glad not to have to spend another night on your flying fortress - it is a doughty place, but grim," he said. "Your chambers are much better."

"Well, thanks," Steve said. "Want something to drink? Anything to eat? You can have the bed, of course - I'll bunk on the couch. If you're going to stay long, let me know and I'll get hold of a cot instead..."

Thor shook his head. "My thanks, but there is no need. I will only be here for a few days; I must away to see my lady Jane."

"Oh, yeah!" Steve came back through the apartment, holding a pitcher of water in one hand. "Jane Foster, huh? Your girl...friend from New Mexico? I've seen some pictures."

Despite himself, Thor felt a silly grin soften his face at the thought of her. "Aye, an exceptional woman, as brilliant as she is beautiful."

"She must be some kind of genius then," Steve said with a chuckle, but his smile quickly sobered. "You're lucky to have her."

"I am, and I long to see her again," Thor admitted quietly. "We have been apart for too long."

"Yeah, I.. I know that feeling." Steve's features worked, as his desire to keep up pleasant cheer for his guest battled with a deep well of sadness underneath. In the end his smile lost out, and he shrugged and shook his head as if the banish the shade of sadness. "A lot of doors got closed to me, when I went under the ice."

Seventy years had passed on this realm, while Steve Rogers had slept; from the time his plane had gone under to the time he had awoken was no more than a handful of seasons in Asgard, as little remarked as the passing of one hour to the next. Yet on Midgard, such a handful of seasons had been enough to transform the entire face of the realm. It was strange enough to Thor, who had no ties here; how much more painful for one to whom it had been home?

Thor reached out and placed a hand on Steve's shoulder, a firm and comforting grip. "It is always hard to leave your whole world behind you, no matter how welcoming the new one tries to be," he said quietly.

Steve gave him a startled look, softening quickly into understanding. "Yeah. I guess you'd... yeah."

For a moment they just stood there, exchanging a silent communion; Thor squeezed Steve's shoulder carefully, then moved off. Steve set down the pitcher of water and poured two glasses, one for guest and one for host. "Although, it hasn't always been exactly welcoming, either," he said. "No matter how hard they try to fit me in, I still just don't click. There's so many things about this world I don't understand, that no one bothers to explain because they understand it so well it's subliminal. They don't _think_ about it, like a fish doesn't think about water. Meanwhile, I'm drowning."

"It sounds hard," Thor sympathized, sitting down at the offered chair.

Steve took the other seat with a sigh. "Plus an alien leading an invading army to smash up New York is kind of..." He glanced at Thor and broke off whatever he'd been about to say. "Sorry."

Thor grimaced at the reminder, but the events of last season could not be ignored: not when they were the entire reason he had ever met the other Avengers at all. "Nay, do not apologize for speaking truth," he said.

Steve leaned forward across the table, his blue eyes deeply earnest. "Look Thor, I just want you to know, that I understand one thing: no matter what he's done, he's still your brother and he means a lot to you," Steve said. "He's done some awful things, but I believe that nobody is beyond redemption, if they really want to be."

"I wish to believe this as well," Thor admitted quietly, staring out the window at the undisturbed city. "But I have responsibilities, and I cannot overlook the danger my brother poses to this world. You may speak of redemption, but the truth is that I do not know in my heart if my brother _wants_ to abandon his evil ways and return to the light. "

"Yeah... that makes it kinda hard," Steve agreed. "I wish I could tell you that he did Thor, I just don't know."

Thor switched his attention back to his shield-comrade, coming now to the heart of the reason for his visit. "But you _can _tell me of my brother's last appearance, can you not?" he said eagerly. "Were the Avengers not called to fight against him? Were you unable to capture him then?"

"Uh... Sort of?" Steve scratched at the back of his neck uncomfortably. "But I wasn't there. I kind of missed the memo on that, so I only found out after it was all over and the Avengers had stood down. All I can tell you is what I know."

"Then I will still know more than I do now," Thor said.

Steve nodded, and drew in a long breath to speak. "Okay," he said. "The first we - that is, SHIELD, the Avengers, heard about it was when people started reporting a disturbance over upstate new york. Lights in the sky, explosions - someone even swore that they saw a giant black dragon breathing flame at a military helicopter, which everybody thought must be impossible."

Thor could imagine it quite clearly; he'd seen that dragon more than once before, after all. "Oh, no. Not impossible at all."

"Anyway, Nat took the Avengers jet out there with Iron Man and Doctor Banner," Steve continued. "By the time they arrived on the scene, the helicopter was already down. When they got there they found out that a fight had broken out between the mutants and the U.S. Army, and Loki had apparently come in on the side of the mutants.

"The Avengers managed to convince both sides to back off and stand down, and the army went back to their base, and Loki went off with the rest of the mutants back to _their_ base. Whatever he told them, it was apparently good enough that Nat and the others were willing to let him walk away. Or at least, that they didn't think it was worth starting another fight over him right then."

Even intent as he was on the thread of the story, Thor did not fail to notice that he spoke of the others by formal titles - "Iron Man" and "Doctor Banner," but spoke of the Widow with the more familiar "Nat." It seemed that Steve Rogers had managed to cement one strong warrior bond, then, which was a pleasing thought. Couples forged in the heat of battle had the strongest bond afterwards, Thor thought with satisfaction.

But there were more pressing matters at hand. "You keep talking about these... mutants," Thor said. "Fury used that word, as well. Who _are_ they?"

That question seemed to be at the heart of this tangle; if only Thor knew what kind of people they were, perhaps he could guess at Loki's thoughts and plans from their company. Certainly he'd had no luck lately trying to understand what was going on in his brother's mind by himself.

Steve's expression was troubled, doubtful. "I'm not sure I'm really the best person to ask," he said. "Are you sure you don't want to call up Tony instead? He's definitely the person to ask about current affairs. He's so caught up on current affairs I think he's actually living six months in the future."

"I am sure," Thor said firmly. "The iron man is a brave warrior, and a clever artificer, and a loyal shield-brother, but..."

He paused, groping for words. "But?" Steve prompted him.

Thor grimaced. "But he is not... he does not make of himself a bridge for knowledge. He very much enjoys his cleverness and how it sets him above others. I do not particularly enjoy the thought of going to him in humbleness, revealing my ignorance of such a basic facet of Midgardian life." What he did not want to say - partly because he did not want to admit it to himself - was that living under the long shadow of the wisdom of Odin and the cleverness of Loki had made Thor loath to admit ignorance before people who were, undoubtedly, smarter than himself.

Steve's eyes filled with sympathy, and he nodded. "I feel you there," he said. "All right, I'll do the best I can. Keep in mind this is all stuff I learned second-hand, from after I woke up. They didn't even _have_ mutants back in the '40s. Well... they probably did, but they didn't make the news. Kept to themselves, mostly, I guess."

"But what _are_ mutants?" Thor prompted him.

"I guess they're a kind of super-human, people who have powers and abilities that normal humans don't have," Steve replied.

"Like yourself?"

Steve shook his head. "No, science gave me this body," he said. "The mutants are _born_ that way, instead. Their DNA is completely different. They say they're a whole different species; _homo superior,_ instead of us, that's _homo sapiens. _There's something about a next 'great leap' of evolution, and an X-Gene, and how you can be a carrier for it if you aren't one yourself. But I admit it's all kind of over my head."

"I see," Thor said, although he didn't really.

"They're being born all the time now, in lots of different places," Steve said. "Sometimes the mutation is visible, really obvious, and you can tell at a glance who's a mutant and who's not. But then other times you can't tell at all, they look just like normal humans. And sometimes the mutation is really beneficial, really useful, like bones that don't break or very fast healing... But then sometimes it's not at all, just something like scales instead of skin or spines instead of hair, it's completely random."

He broke off upon seeing Thor's expression, shaking his head in apology. "I'm sorry, I'm really not explaining this well," he said.

"No, no, I understand your meaning," Thor quickly reassured him. "But what I do not understand is what business my brother would have with these 'mutants.' From what you say, they are scattered among the population, and yet Fury seemed to be saying that there is a whole village of them and that is where my brother is."

"That's where I really can't help you, I'm afraid," Steve apologized. "It's all gotten very political, and I'm not good at political. You'd really need to find someone else to explain it."

"I see," Thor said, sinking back into gloom. Fury had made it clear he did not have time to play tutor; it looked like he would have to find Tony Stark, after all.

"Say!" Steve's expression brightened with a new thought. "Here's an idea. There's this radio show I like to listen to in order to catch up on the news. I find it really helpful, they manage to explain things in a way that always makes sense. I remember hearing them say the other day that they're doing a special segment on mutants this afternoon. They're bringing a special guest on the topic, he's published a bunch of books and is really well known. Maybe if you listen to his show, he can explain it to you better than I can."

"That is an excellent suggestion, Steven Rogers," Thor said, pleased. "I will take it to heart, then, and listen to this man of learning that you have recommended. I am sure that everything will be made clear."

* * *

><p>Steve had to leave the apartment for a time - he had an appointment at something called "the VA office," the significance of which was lost to Thor - but he generously offered Thor use of both his chambers and his radio while he was gone. Thor spent some time changing the device from one frequency to another - listening to all of the different musical programs - before switching it to the one Steve had recommended.<p>

Unlike the other programs, which played various styles of music, this one was filled with the rapid chatter of male voices. There were several speakers, and they spoke so quickly and firmly - often on top of each other - that Thor found it hard to keep track of what they were saying. The outpouring of words without accompanying visual image, or being able to watch the faces and voices of the speakers, was hard to process. Much of the subject matter, too, was unfamiliar to Thor and thus meant nothing to him; but whatever the subject, the radio voices spoke on them with a firm and loud authority.

A short musical sequence played, and then one of the voices - who seemed to be the main speaker for this program - came back on. "And now at the top of the hour, what you've all been waiting for: our celebrity corner! For this week's special guest we have nationally published author Milhouse Mannstrom, author of the controversial book 'The Twisted Helix.' "

This could only be Steve's learned scholar, and Thor sat up and paid the radio box close attention. The announcer went on, "He is currently touring to promote his new book, 'The Curving Bullet,' which talks about an alleged mutant connection in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Thanks for being here today."

A second male voice responded, in a deep and scratchy voice: "It's good to be here, Bob."

The announcer continued, saying, "So Milhouse - Can I call you Milhouse? -"

"Actually, I would prefer if you call me _Doctor _Mannstrom," the second speaker interrupted.

"So, Doctor - You've gotten a lot of attention in the media recently for your well-known and outspoken opinions about mutants. You've written two books on the subject -"

"Four books, actually," Mannstrom interrupted again.

Once again the announcer accepted the correction. "Four books on the subject - so tell me, Doctor Mannstrom, what is your position on the mutant question?"

"Well Bob, I think that the mutant menace is the greatest unspoken danger facing our country today," Mannstrom replied. "Oh sure, you see in the newspapers, or on the internet, stories with pictures of cute little mutant girls clutching stuffed bunnies - bullshit! It's all publicity. Publicity. It's how they keep us quiet while they carry out their agenda. Don't think they aren't organized, don't think they aren't smart. They're wolves in sheep's clothing, monsters among us. The mutants are out to destroy America and you can see that they've already made a good start.

"In my book I publish evidence that a mutant conspiracy was behind the assassination of JFK. Earlier you said that my book was about 'allegations,' and that's simply not true, because 'allegation' means there's some doubt. There's no 'theories' here, no 'allegations' - the FBI themselves did an investigation and arrested the mutant assassin. Well, there are mutant terrorist enclaves out there right now, some of them in your very neighborhood. Your government knows they're there and they haven't told you. Why is that? I'll tell you why. Some of them are suborned, traitors to humankind. Others are just cowards. While they sit back and do nothing, the mutants are going to destroy America."

The announcing voice chuckled, but it sounded forced. When he spoke it sounded strained, uneasy. "Uh, well, those are some pretty strong sentiments here..." he started to say, but Mannstrom overrode him.

"Well, I think our country needs some strong sentiments. Some plain spoken talk. What I'm saying is just what everybody thinks, but is too afraid to say. They're too afraid of being not 'politically correct' to stand up and speak the truth. They say," and his voice shifted briefly into a high, nasal, whining tone; "You can't say mean things about mutants, they might get their feelings hurt! I say, I'm not just going to sit back and let them poison our children's minds, poison our way of life. I'm going to fight! You know, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, and I think that's true for a mutant-free future, too."

The broadcast went on for some time; and Thor sat transfixed in slowly growing horror, as the true extent of the mutant menace was revealed to him.

* * *

><p>Thor hurled himself through the air behind Mjolnir, urging them both to great speeds fueled by his seething tension. A dark thundercloud gathered in the atmosphere around him as he traveled, reflecting the turmoil of his heart and mind. The dark grumbling clouds, punctuated infrequently by fractal sparks of electricity leaping from cloud to cloud, were a perfect counterpoint to his mood: anger and grief, punctuated by a bitter disappointment.<p>

It seemed that his worst fears were to be realized after all: Loki had, once again, allied himself with monsters. That he had caused no worse trouble since his reappearance on Earth than one battle with the local militia - at least, that the mortals were aware of - had briefly stirred his hopes, but they were dashed again; Thor well knew that his brother could be patient, and bide his time in plots long and deeply laid. But if he had given his loyalty to these mutants, he must too be allied to their dark purpose: to destroy from the heart the human world in which they lived, and rampage among its innocence. Grief there was, that his hopes which had raised so briefly had been dashed, and disappointment that his darkest suspicions were confirmed; but mostly Thor was just angry, angry, angry.

The trip was a brief one; it was less than a hundred miles between Steve's apartment in New York City and the remote, concealed village where Heimdall had last seen Loki disappear. Truly, the mutants had chosen their base well, strategically placed to strike at the heart of the humans' capital city. From the air it had a calm and pastoral look: green meadows and wooded fields surrounded a complex of tall buildings half-coated with winding ivy. A long and shaded lane wound around a lake up to the front gates, which Thor ignored and flew over before landing on a long strip of empty lawn near the edge.

There was no sign of Loki. Nor was there any sign of the mutant warriors, although Thor was certain they would show themselves soon enough; his arrival could hardly be ignored. Just to make clear what they were dealing with, Thor raised Mjolnir and called the following storm to him, thunder rumbling and growling as the clouds swirled together and cast an eerie twilight over the hidden mutant base.

All looked peaceful, but Thor was not deceived. The monsters sat in this base and schemed to conquer, to poison, to destroy the kingdom of innocent humans about them. He would find Loki in this maze, he would drag him out and confront him, and force news of whatever vile plans he had for Midgard from his lying mouth. No longer would he sit idly by, and let others plot and spin mayhem as they pleased. Today, they would have to face the judgment of Thor.

**"LOKI!"** Thor roared, and swung Mjolnir to the sky, buzzing with the force of his rage and calling an answering _crack_ of lightning from the clouds overhead.** "COME FORTH!"**

* * *

><p>~tbc...<p> 


	3. Chapter 2

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Author's Notes:** Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to _A Villain State of Mind_ and directly follows _Cover Up the Sun._

Negotiations - predictably - go south.

* * *

><p>The early evening sky was plunged into an eerie twilight, thick grey clouds crowding the sky and turning the western sky an eerie red. Rain fell, not in a steady downpour but in sharp cold gusts of water carried and flung hard by the scurrying wind. Thunder growled and grumbled overhead, illuminating the scene with flashes of lightning as Thor paced back and forth upon the green, waiting for the mutants to answer his challenge.<p>

They definitely knew he was there - Thor spotted a few humanoid silhouettes or faces poking out of doors and windows, before being hastily shut against the wind and the rain. But it seemed they were too cowardly to come out and face him head on. "Hear me, foul creatures!" he roared, relying on the wind and thunder to carry his words. "I am the son of Odin, Prince of Asgard, master of storms! Yield my traitorous brother back to me, or I will tear these hovels to the ground!"

His challenge echoed between the buildings, and Thor waited for long minutes, his anger and blood rising higher with every moment. Then a door opened, and the wind veered suddenly and sharply towards the south, opening a patch of blue sky overhead.

Thor tensed, hand on Mjolnir, as someone began to approach him through the rain - but a flash of lightning illuminated the shadowy figure, and he snarled, because it was not Loki. The figure was female - tall and athletic, with soft brown skin and a shock of pale hair rising from her head. She was quite a handsome woman, and at any other time Thor would have admired her beauty, the grace of her step, the confident power of her stance. But right now, he was in no mood for appreciation.

He pointed Mjolnir towards her as she approached. "So, the mutants send a champion to face me?" he demanded. "Speak your name, that I might know whom I defeat."

"So one has come from beyond the edges of the earth, calling himself a lord and claiming dominionship over this land and its skies?" the woman called out as she approached. As she came closer he could see that her hair was not only fair, but pure white - as white as her eyes, from which light and power wreathed upwards like smoke. "I don't _think so,_ mister."

She raised her arms, and Thor saw that she was wearing a tight-fighted suit of black and shining armor, attached to which was a cape that trailed behind her as she moved. A sudden powerful gust of wind rose from the earth, lifting the cape to stream behind her, and the wind roared upwards and outwards to tear the clouds asunder. The grass and trees flattened under the sudden assault, and the rain was snatched away. Thor _felt_ his conjured storm break into tatters and be swept away, and the shock momentarily cooled the heat of his temper. He had not known that anyone among the Midgardians had such powers.

"Are you the leader of these mutants?" Thor asked her, as the roar of wind around her died away.

She turned towards him, her expression decidedly unimpressed under those white-wreathed eyes. "You could say that," she said. "Ororo Munroe. Some call me _Storm."_

It was a fitting title, at least, Thor thought. "Then you are the one to whom I must speak," he said. "Bring forth Loki, that he can answer for his crimes!"

"Look, I don't know who you think you are -" Storm started to say.

Had she not heard his declaration earlier? "I am Thor Odinson," he said, anger beginning to creep back into his voice. "Son of Odin All-Father, King of Asgard, foremost among the Nine Realms!"

"All right." She rolled her eyes. "Let me rephrase that. I don't _care_ who you think you are. This is private property and you're neither invited nor welcome here. Class is in session and _you're _disturbing the students. You have no business trespassing onto our property and threatening our people."

"Loki is not one of _you people,_" Thor snarled. "He is my brother, and I have a right to him!"

"_Loki_ has lived among us for months and fought beside us in our direst hour," she shot back. "He has proven his loyalty to us beyond the shadow of a doubt. He _is_ one of _our people._ If you're here to raise a hand against him, you'll have to go through us first! More specifically..." She spread her arms again, and her eyes began to glow with eldritch light as the wind rose to her command again. "_Me."_

The twilight darkened further as the clouds thickened overhead. Thor reached out to them with his power, and was astonished when they resisted his call. He could not wrest control of the storm back from this strange woman, and that should have been impossible - and yet it was so. With a scowl he began to whip Mjolnir around in a circle, conjuring a wind to answer his will.

She countered his power with her own, bringing winds to match the speed of his winds and keep them veered and corralled away from them. The two of them stood at the center of a swiftly speeding vortex, as the two elemental forces - neither able to escape nor overpower the other, driving each other into increasing frenzy - spun round and round in an endless circle. The force of it threatened to knock Thor off his feet, much as he had done to the Destroyer back in the desert town, but he hung grimly on to his stance.

He called lightning to the head of Mjolnir, and threw a bolt at the weather-witch. Eyes blazing, she caught it in one hand and redirected it, a terrible arc of white and blue haloing her form. Lightning jumped and crackled all around them, leaping from ground and sky and in between, until they stood at the center of a howling hurricane of wind and lightning. Plants groaned and bent before the force of it, and tongues of lightning left scorchmarks on the stones of the wall or in the grassy turf. Hail began to rattle down from the clouds above, caught in the storm of wind and lightning, flinging small missiles of ice at deadly speeds. The hurricane pushed slowly outward as the pressure from inside increased, yet still neither one of them would yield to the other.

Thor gritted his teeth and readied his hammer; unbelievable as it might be, this mortal witch had storm-powers that equalled (or, if he dared to admit it, even surpassed) his own. But she was still only a mortal, and he did not see the power of the warrior in her muscles or stance. She could be felled as any giant could be felled. One blow with Mjolnir...

_"Cease."_

The word was not loud, but it carried through the roar of the winds like a knife-blade sliding through leather. Storm looked startled, and backed up a few steps; her arms lowered, and the fury of the hurricane began to wane. Thor followed her eyes, already knowing to whom the voice belonged; his heart began to hammer double-time as he recognized the slim dark figure standing at the edge of their melee.

He studied the combatants with a cold and haughty expression, but it was to Storm that he spoke. "I thank you, Ororo, but it is probably better if I take things from here."

"Are you sure?" Storm shot Thor an exceedingly dubious look. "I don't think he's exactly in the mood to talk reasonably."

Loki studied Thor, and one side of his mouth curled up. "When is he ever?" he murmured dryly, and for a moment Loki and Storm shared the exact same expression. It was somewhat unnerving for Thor; he was used to Loki looking at him with contempt, but not at all used to other people _agreeing_ with him. "But I'm afraid to say, he's entirely capable of wrecking a large swath of the countryside around in a temper if he doesn't get what he wants. I'll deal with him."

"If that's what you want," Storm said, ceding the field with some reluctance. "We'll be here if you need us, you know."

"I know," Loki replied.

She let the rest of her windstorm wane to nothing; Thor's winds gusted harder for a moment, finding themselves suddenly without resistance, before he hastily quieted them in turn. Storm turned to go, walking towards the nearest building before she abruptly wheeled around and glared at Thor. "But don't think this makes us weather buddies, or _worthy opponents,_ or any of that shit," she said, jabbing a finger towards him. "I've got my eye on you, Odinson!"

The wind died down, a lull in the heart of the storm as the two brothers regarded each other warily. Loki looked better than Thor had last seen him, Thor had to admit; better than he had when he had stepped out of Yggdrasil's dark paths into the heart of the dark elf siege. Then he had looked gaunt and hallowed, still half-crazed from the Chitauri invasion, with dark circles under his eyes and a dangerous tension running right under his skin, like a lightning bolt about to snap out.

Now he looked much more well-fed, less dangerously gaunt, with finer and better-repaired clothes - Midgardian clothes - and his hair sleek and groomed again, in a smooth tail down his back. His green eyes were calmer, less white showing about the edges, less liable to dart from place to place. The electric tension was still there, though.

Thor had to remind himself once again of the different flows of time in different realms; though it had been but a month for Thor, much more time would have passed for Loki on Earth. It was a disconcerting thought, that his time stream and Loki's could have split so wildly, that much of Loki's life had passed without Thor experiencing the same passage of time himself. It felt like a divergence, like the two of them who had always been in one boat down a river now splitting off into separate currents, drifting away and leaving Thor behind. It felt like a wrench, though Thor could not say exactly why it made him feel that way.

Loki was the one to break the silence between them. "What are you doing here, Thor?" he asked.

"That is the very question I have come to ask you, Loki," Thor replied. "What are _you_ doing in this place, among these people?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "Well, until this untimely little display of your temper, I _was_ teaching my class," he said in an annoyed drawl.

Thor sputtered. "Teaching? _You_? " It was a ludicrous thought. Loki as a teacher? Loki, who hoarded secrets like a dragon hoarded gold? Loki, who was ever impatient and scornful towards anyone slower of thought than he (which included pretty much everyone in Asgard, let alone Midgard.) Loki, who had led an army against this realm not a year prior, spending his time in _teaching_ the mortals he so despised? "I do not believe it. What would _you_ teach?"

Loki's voice practically dripped with ice. "Cosmology," he said.

All levity dropped away, and Thor's eyes widened in alarm. Loki knew more of the secret paths in and around Asgard than anyone else in that Realm; that was how he had been able to sneak Thor and the Deepness out of the siege, and that was how he had let the Frost Giants in. "You are betraying our secrets to these creatures?" Thor said accusingly.

"What, like the time _you_ told all of Asgard's secrets to that Foster woman of yours?" Loki scoffed.

"That was different!" Thor protested. Jane Foster was a good woman, and wise and learned (for a Midgardian.) She would never turn against Asgard.

"Oh? How?" Loki crossed his arms over his chest. "They live in the same Realms we do; they have the right to know of the universe around them. That's all there is to it."

"That's never all," Thor said, voice low. "Not when it comes to you, Loki. It can never be so simple."

Loki heaved an exasperated breath. "What do you want from me, Thor?" he demanded.

"I want to know what you are doing!"

Loki snarled. "I already told you what I am doing - _teaching!"_

"No!" Thor shouted. Loki could be sly and slippery, but Thor could outmatch him in stubbornness. "I want to know what you are _really_ doing - whatever secret plot you are hatching!"

"For the last time, I. AM. NOT. DOING. ANYTHING!" Loki shouted, punctuating each word with a sharp jab at Thor's chest. "Apart from _breathing_, which apparently in itself is an offense to you!"

That _hurt,_ shaking Thor down to the core, and he responded with a savage fury. "How DARE you!" he roared. "I grieved for you - when I thought you were - you have no idea how I felt, no idea at all. I was _overjoyed _to learn you were alive!"

"Oh, _joy_, yes, I can see that you are!" Loki snarled, the sarcasm bitter and savage in his mouth. "I can see the _joy_ just steaming off you! As soon as you discover I am alive again, you immediately take it upon yourself to chastise me for my... oh, what was the phrasing... 'imagined slights?' " He grinned maliciously.

"I don't -"

Thor tried to respond, but Loki cut him off with a sharp gesture, the nasty smile sliding slowly off his face. "You didn't question it very hard, did you? You were so _glad_ to see me _beg_ for your forgiveness, so _proud_ of me for sacrificing myself in some suitably heroic stupidity!"

"That's not -" Thor said, but Loki rode right over him, caught up in a whirlwind of his own furious unhappiness.

"Admit it, Thor, you loved me better _dead _than you _ever _did alive! How it must _infuriate_ you to see all that good work wasted -"

"I'M NOT ANGRY BECAUSE YOU'RE ALIVE!" Thor roared, finally getting a word in over Loki's bitter rant through sheer volume. "I'm angry because you _lied! _ Because you _tricked _me, and ran off! I lost everyone, Loki, _everyone! _ And you let me believe that! _WHY?"_

"I did what I must to protect myself!" Loki took a harsh breath, the muscles in his jaw working as he took a step back, visibly getting hold of himself. "It was the only chance I had to escape and not be pursued! What reason had I to return to Asgard, when all that awaited me was eternity in a cell? You know perfectly well that Odin would never have allowed your pardon to stand -"

"Odin no longer rules in Asgard," Thor interrupted him.

Loki's expression went milk-pale, shock draining all the color out of it. For a moment he was utterly still, all motion and emotion fled inwards. It was a long moment before he managed to stutter out, "What..." He swallowed, and had to work before he could manage to say, "He's dead?"

"No," Thor shook his head. "But he has not woken from the Odinsleep since Mother died. I am Prince-Regent, making decisions in his name, for now."

Loki was silent for several moments, and then he let out a bitter laugh. "So you are king of Asgard, at last," he said, "in all that matters but name. The Bifrost is repaired, else you could not have come here. So I suppose you can visit your little friends and your little girlfriend any time you will, too. Congratulations, Thor," he said with his voice searing with sarcasm, "you officially_ have it all."_

"Not _all,"_ Thor said, daring to grasp at this moment of unexpected - not peace_,_ but at least, a strange kind of _detante_ between them. "Not until _you _come home."

Loki shook his head. "I _am _home, Thor."

Thor started, looking around him incredulously. The landscape probably did not show itself to its best advantage right now, in the gray storm-twilight and with wind and lightning damage all over the place - but even without that, it was a mere collection of hovels compared to Asgard. Hovels, inhabited by evil beings. How could Loki possibly _prefer_ this to the Golden Realm? "This place? This place is no home!"

"It is a place that has accepted me. Among people who accept me - for who I am." Some of the anger and bitterness seemed to fade out of him, leaving him drained and tired. "All I want is to be left _alone_. After all you and Asgard have done to me... Why can't you give me this chance?"

The plaintive tone struck a spark of guilt in Thor, which quickly fanned the flames of his outrage. How dare Loki try make _Thor_ feel guilty, after all _Loki _ had done? "Done to _you?_ Do not pretend to be the injured party, Loki!" he growled. _"You_ led an army against Midgard! Give you a _chance?_ I tried to give you chances again and again, and each time you spurned me!" Loki rolled his eyes theatrically, which only spurred Thor's ire further. "And now that I come back, I find you have allied with monsters yet again!"

"Monsters?" Loki looked startled, then offended. He huffed an incredulous laugh. "You mean the mutants? My friends - _monsters? _ Is _that _what you think, Thor?"

"It is what is said!" Thor retorted angrily. "All in Midgard know the true base nature of these subhuman miscreations -"

"_Oh,_ you're just like the others!" Loki shouted, his temper reasserting itself with blinding speed. "Closed-minded fools. They see greatness and they react with jealousy, hate and fear! The mutants aren't less than human, Thor. They are _more!_ More akin to us than the humans ever were.

"In their powers are sparks of godhood. Through them, the human genome struggles to regain what was lost, to repair what was broken. When all the humans are dead and gone it is the mutants, the children of mankind, who will inherit this world." There was a fanatic light glowing in his eyes now, a wide smile breaking across his face as he turned and reached one hand out towards Thor in invitation. "The mutants are the _future_, Thor! Midgard's future among the stars, by _our_ sides. Twilight may come for the mortals, but for the mutants, dawn is only just rising!"

Sparks of godhood? Midgard's future in the stars? Thor shook his head, angry and distressed. Did Loki not even realize how divorced from reality he had become, to spout such absurdities? He clutched at Loki's hand on his chest, hoping to draw him back to reason through touch alone. "Loki, you are delusional! Enough of these ravings - come to your senses!" he pleaded.

Shock played across Loki's face for a moment, a brief moment of betrayed woe, quickly swallowed by rage. "Delusional?" he shouted, and shoved Thor fiercely away. Where before he had been struggling to keep a grip on his temper, now he seemed to have lost that grip entirely, struggling for words out of a mouth that would rather spit acid. "**DELUSIONAL?** You think that what I say is 'ravings' just because your _dull wits _cannot comprehend it? The very world must be brim-full of madmen to your eyes, Thor!"

Thor gritted his teeth. He should have known, there was no reasoning with Loki; sooner or later, all his attempts to reach him through speech broke down. Where words failed, force must substitute, and at least this was something Thor was not lacking. "If you will not willingly accompany me," he growled, "then I will _make _you come! By force, if I must!"

Loki glared at him, eyes two cold chips of poisoned ice as he slid back into a combat stance. "I'd just like to see you try," he hissed.

Gripping Mjolnir forward, Thor lunged forward and reached for the lapels of Loki's coat. He was much stronger than Loki, and Loki knew it as well as he; if he could get Loki in his grip, usually he would not even try to resist. But Loki shoved him back again, wrenching himself free of Thor's grasp. A green flicker at the corner of Thor's vision drew his eye to Loki's left hand, held low by his hip; a slim, razor-sharp dagger appeared in that hand, sweeping up to strike low.

At the sight of his brother drawing steel on him, Thor's reflexes kicked in; his hand shot out and grabbed Loki's wrist, squeezing tight enough to force the tendons to yield, opening the fingers and loosening his grip on the weapon. Loki snarled wordlessly and grabbed Thor's arm with his free hand, and for a moment the two of them grappled.

Light flashed off to Thor's side, accompanied by a soft _fhwazm_ sound almost drowned out by the lightning. Before Thor could untangle himself from Loki enough to react, a sudden blast of stinging heat slapped the side of his face. "_Leave him alone!"_ shrieked a new, high-pitched voice.

Thor disengaged from Loki and staggered back a step, brushing at his face and blinking in an attempt to clear his vision. In an instant a small body was in front of him, a sphere of red light crackling between its hands, which was then flung at his chest a moment later. "You won't take Professor Loki away! _I won't let you!"_

The small ball of fire crackled for a moment against his breastplate and then vanished; it was not strong enough or hot enough to really do more than sting for a moment. Thor looked with astonishment at his new opponent. It was a little girl, perhaps fifteen to twenty for an Aesir child - less for a mortal, he suspected. She stood barely waist-high to him, crowned with sunny blond hair over a stormy, scowling face as she readied another fireball.

"Illyana, stop this at once!" Loki called out, a note of real alarm in his voice.

"No! I won't let him!" the girl - Illyana - replied, and let loose a wash of green sparking energy, which Thor had to bat away and stamp out. With a shriek of frustration, the child flung herself at Thor and began kicking and punching at his legs.

"What is this?" Thor asked, bewildered, trying to fend off the small yet furious assault. "Why is this child here?"

Loki lunged forward and grabbed the girl around the shoulders, hauling her away to a safe distance. "She's here because she's one of my students here!" he snapped back, sounding deeply exasperated. "Because _this is a school._ Honestly, Thor, where did you think you were?"

"But..." Thor realized he _had_ known, or should have known. He remembered back at the beginning of the confrontation, when Storm had said that he was disturbing class sessions. And Loki, too, had said that he was a teacher here. But those references had not made sense to him at the time, and so he had ignored them - until he was faced with incontrovertible evidence that this was, indeed, a _school._

The realization shook him more than anything in his previous conversation had - as he realized how careless he had been with his wind and lightning in close proximity to such vulnerable targets. This was not the terrorist enclave that had been described to him on the radio, not the breeding-ground for ravening monsters he had been led to expect; this was a school, and Loki really was a teacher ("professor," the little girl had called him) to the children here. Loki had not been lying - _at least,_ a cynical part of him cautioned, _not about that._

Nothing about this made sense, and Thor did not know how to react, not with his accustomed battle-mode crumbling around him. He could not harm a child, not even a mutant child, no matter how determined _she_ seemed to be to rip his armor open with her bare hands.

A new figure appeared on the edge of the clearing, and Thor blanched and grabbed for Mjolnir as he took in its appearance: dark-blue and furry, with head and limbs like a human's but running along on all fours like a beast. It (he) hopped into one of the surviving trees, swung upside down from a stripped-bare branch, and casually said "I say, old bean, could you use some help out here?"

"I could have used some help in there," Loki snapped, still struggling to contain his armful of hellion child. "Hank, what were you _thinking,_ letting Illyana get in the middle of this? She could have been hurt!"

"Loki, she can _teleport,_" the Beast protested, sounding wounded. "Which _you_ taught her to do, so don't blame me. I couldn't exactly stop her, especially not after she heard that you were going to be taken away -"

"You were listening?" Loki interrupted, sounding scandalized.

The beast coughed uncomfortably, and swung around on the branch to a different position. "We-ell, Whisper may have helped amplify your conversation so we could listen in. Had to know if things were going to go pear-shaped, you know. But she didn't really need to magnify much - your conversation was quite emphatic all on its own."

"I told you, I can handle this," Loki snapped. "The rest of you, stay out of it!"

More and more strange figures were appearing around the edge of the circle - some of them human-looking, like the red-haired woman who smelled faintly of burning limestone, and others even stranger than the beast, like the yellow-eyed demon with the long pointed tail that appeared in a sudden clap of air by Loki's other side.

This was getting out of hand. Thor gritted his teeth, stepped forward, and grabbed Loki's elbow. "Enough!" he roared. "Loki is my brother, and he _will_ be coming with me. None of you can stay a Prince of Asgard about his duties!"

Loki twisted and broke from his grip, but in the process he managed to lose hold of the little girl. "Yes I CAN!" she shrieked, and raised both hands, which were crackling with a yellow-white light.

There came a _fhwazm_ noise from somewhere below Thor's feet - and suddenly the ground beneath his feet vanished and he was falling. He had a brief, startled vision of Loki and the rest of the mutants, and the school, rushing upwards around him - before he was falling through clear, empty air.

Astonishment kept him paralyzed for a moment, and he tumbled through the sky, catching a wheeling glimpse of rough green-covered hills below him. _Far_ below. Thor had enough experience in flying to know that he was at least a mile up in the air, if not more.

Fortunately that gave him plenty of time to steady himself, bring Mjolnir to bear and fling her in a new trajectory across the sky. He scanned the ground below him, seeking a familiar landmark, but could find none; he was nowhere near the school where he had confronted Loki.

_That little witch!_ he thought furiously, but he could not truly bring himself to be angry at a child. Indeed, he thought with some reluctant admiration, she was quite skilled for a mortal of her tender years.

As she should be, if Loki really was her tutor.

The long flight through the clear empty air did have one advantage; it gave Thor time to think, to sort out the confusing events of the last hour and try and make some sense of the new, radically skewed perspective that had been forced on him.

By the time he spotted a black aircraft on the horizon - from its unique shape, he knew it could be none other than the Helicarrier - Thor had figured out one thing beyond any doubts.

He angled himself to land on the Helicarrier deck, which wheeled about to meet his heading and then hovered, waiting for him. Standing on the hard tarmac where the planes took off and landed was Commander Fury, hands shoved in his long black coat and looking none too pleased about the situation.

Nor was Thor. He pulled up to land on the paved surface without cratering it, and shipped Mjolnir back into his belt. Squaring his shoulders, he turned to meet Nick Fury's eyes without flinching. "You," he said, "owe me some answers."

Fury nodded slowly, his eye meeting Thor's; there was a furious, almost apoplectic anger burning behind that eye that manifested itself in a kind of perfectly-controlled calm. "I suppose I do," he said. "And you owe me some, including what the hell you were thinking when you decided to kick off another war."

* * *

><p>~tbc...<p> 


	4. Chapter 3

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Author's Notes:** Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to _A Villain State of Mind_ and directly follows _Cover Up the Sun._

Thor is forced to reconsider a number of his assumptions.

* * *

><p>When it came to delivering a tirade, Thor thought, Commander Fury certainly lived up to his name.<p>

No sooner had they reached a briefing room on the helicarrier than the storm in Fury's expression broke. Thor had intended to demand more information about Loki, but the sheer force of Fury's anger overrode him and quickly drove him back on the defensive, breaking apart every attempt of Thor's to explain.

"I have done nothing wrong!" Thor found himself nearly shouting. "I learned of a dire threat in the borders of your land and I took action -"

"The hell you did!" Fury interrupted him. "What _threat? _The X-Men are our _ allies! "_

"Your ally?" Thor was stunned. "I... I didn't know - "

"No, you didn't know!" And now Fury _was_ shouting. "You don't know _anything_ about this land, its history or its politics. And a half-hour radio broadcast isn't _nearly_ enough information to plan a successful assault even if your source had been credible - which it wasn't! You _don't_ know what the mutants are, you _don't_ know what they're capable of - lucky for you it _was_ our allies you decided to attack, since the mutants there don't _believe_ in killing!"

Thor scoffed. Certainly, the weather-witch's power had been unexpected, but Thor had faced fiercer foes in his life before and always prevailed. "I could have taken them," he said confidently.

Fury snarled in response. "Let's suppose, hypothetically, that you _could_. Congratulations, you just took out the X-Men," he said with scathing sarcasm. "Know what happens next? Now that the X-Men are no longer around to provide a counterbalancing presence, the Brotherhood goes into action, calling it retaliation for the attacks on the mutant community. Attacks, kidnappings, sabotage, murders, whatever other nasty things you can think up."

Fury was a fool if he thought Thor would just stand by and let such things occur so long as he was on Midgard. "If they try, I -" Thor started to say.

"Meanwhile _you_ have been adopted as a banner for the anti-mutant community; that maniac Mannstrom, the Pure Humans group, a dozen other self-appointed militia all over the country," Fury rode right over him. He began pacing back and forth in the briefing room, coat flaring out behind him. "With the justification that the Avengers, in the person of _you_, have declared open season on mutants, they start targeting and purging every mutant they can find, whether they're dangerous to humans or not!

"There are an estimated four hundred thousand mutants in the United States alone today, and _every one of them_ is going to feel under threat, and God knows how many of them will decide to strike first before somebody strikes them. It turns into a massive civil war, mutants going up in flames all over the country, lynch mobs in the streets attacking anyone even _suspected_ of being a mutant, or family to mutants, or even just a mutant sympathizer -"

Fury stopped and spun to face Thor, raising his hands in frustrated exasperation. "All this would be on _our_ plate to deal with, because some of us can't just swing a hammer a few times and then prance back up to our pretty castle in the skies! Some of us have to live with the fact that actions actually have _consequences_. "

Never since his early days with Tyr, the battlemaster, had Thor felt so thoroughly torn to shreds. "I was just trying to _help! "_

"SPARE ME FROM YOUR IDEA OF HELPING!" Fury roared at the top of his voice. "Not every problem can be solved by hitting it with increasingly mighty blows of a hammer. We've got no shortage of 'mighty hammers' ourselves, believe it or not; if we could solve our problems with brute force, rest assured we are perfectly capable of doing so! If we haven't, there are almost certainly _reasons_ why we haven't, so we don't need Asgardian tourists rushing in to 'help' us! All of which leaves aside, by no means should you have planned _any_ assault without coordinating with the local authorities, 'cause this isn't your country, and you have no jurisdiction here!"

That at least Thor would willingly contest; he _was_ the prince of Asgard and he _did_ have authority over Midgard. He had felt it undiplomatic to say so before, but Fury had to be made aware. "I am prince of Asgard, foremost of the Nine Realms, and Midgard is under my personal protection! _That_ is whence my jurisdiction comes. For thousands of years we have stood guard over the Realms, and protected them - cleansed the lands of evil -"

Fury cut him off with a savage slash of his hand. "We didn't _ask_ for your help in 'cleansing our land of evil,' and if this is a sample, then spare us!" he snarled. "If Earth is under your 'personal protection,' then where the hell were your people during Hurricane Katrina? Typhoon Hagupit? The Fukushima tsunami? We sure as hell could have used a weather-controlling god during those crises. If you choose to stand by then, you don't get to come back _now_ and claim some kind of authority over us!"

Thor had no idea what events Fury was even speaking of, but if news of them had not reached Asgard, then that meant they must only have been local events. "We don't interfere with domestic affairs - those were internal - "

"So was this!" Fury countered. "How about in the last world war, when Hydra was rampaging across the continent with weapons built from the trash _your_ people left on our planet?"

"I…" Thor started, but this time Fury didn't even let him finish his thought.

"Face it, Odinson," Fury said, "you've left us to manage our_ domestic affairs_ long enough that we've found ways to get along just fine without you, and you're doing us no favors by playing interplanetary traffic cop _now!_ Nobody elected you, nobody appointed you, and nobody _asked!"_

Thor was beginning to get a headache, and feeling very sullen and put-upon. Regardless of whether he had made a mistake, Fury still had no right to lecture him like a child - it had not been _his_ misjudgment alone that had led to today's debacle. Whether deliberate on anyone's part or not, Thor had been misled - had been set up for a fall - and to turn this into some sort of arraignment on his personal failings was unjust.

And yet - a part of Thor still squirmed under it, because the better part of him knew that he could not pass all the blame off on others. Even if he had been baited, _he_ chose to take the bait. Even if he had been provoked, he should have had enough self-control not to fly off the handle. Just as he had when Loki had faked his death, he had fallen for the lies because they were comfortable and pleasing. Lies that fit in neatly with his notions of how the world ought to be: a world made up of innocent people requiring his protection on one side, and evil monsters requiring chastisement on the other. It had been so _easy_ for him to accept that anyone who was different, who fell outside the natural order of things, was therefore evil and needed to be eliminated.

All the same… "This never would have happened if you had just told me the _truth!_" Thor shot back. "The truth about Loki, the truth about these so-called 'mutants!' "

_"Oh_ no, this doesn't get put on me!" Fury denied vehemently. "This is your third time on Earth; you shouldn't have _needed_ me to sit around holding your hand! You keep saying you're a prince, and you're hundreds of years old. How the hell did you manage to get along all that time without figuring out that politics is _complicated?_ Is everyone up in Asgard a complete simpleton - or do you just assume that _we_ are?"

"Whoa, hey," a third voice broke in upon their standoff. "Wow, this got real contentious real fast. Let's step back and take a deep breath, count to ten, do some yoga, whatever."

Thor and Fury both turned towards the door, and Thor recognized the short figure leaning insolently up against the doorframe in an instant. "Iron Man," he said in glad greeting, although the iron armor was nowhere in evidence; he was wearing instead a light-colored suit cut not unlike the one Loki had been wearing.

"Stark," Fury growled, clearly not pleased to see him. "What are you doing here?"

"I got a call from Steve," Tony said, strolling into the room. "He seemed to think that the world was ending and it was his fault, so I agreed to try to straighten things out over here."

"If you'd been an hour earlier, you might even have done some good," Fury commented uncharitably, and Tony scowled and flapped a hand towards him as if to wave off the criticism.

"Play nice, Nicky, you had _advance_ warning and you couldn't manage as much either. I know all about the fireworks at Xavier's school - and I have a pretty good idea of what set it off, too. I listened to the podcast version of that broadcast on my way over, and honestly, Thor," he turned towards the Asgardian. "I have to know: what the _hell_ were you thinking?"

Thor growled; he had _just_ spent half an hour trying to explain this very thing to Fury. But perhaps he would get a fairer hearing from his brother-in-arms. "I heard a broadcast from Mannstrom, a wise doctor -" he began to say.

"Whoa whoa," Tony said, putting up both hands palm-out. "Problem number one right there. Milhouse Mannstrom is _not_ a doctor. The closest he's ever come to higher education was a B.A. in Communications at Grace University, Omaha. He just calls himself 'doctor' to try to convince stupid people that he knows what he's talking about."

Thor winced.

" - All the same - in his broadcast, the people of the radio warned of the threat posed by the mutant menace," Thor managed to continue. "He said that they were taking lives, destroying the country, poisoning children. I could not stand by and let such atrocities go unanswered!"

"Okay, uh, Mannstrom's general asshattery aside, that's what we on Midgard call 'hyperbole,' " Tony said. "Stuff like 'destroying America' and 'deadly threat to our way of life' and 'poisoning our children's minds' is just a figure of speech - sure, it's meant to be inflammatory, but why would you think they meant that children were _actually_ being poisoned?"

"Why would I not?!" Thor threw up his hands in frustration. "On Asgard, if a messenger brings reports that a monster is destroying a town and is eating children, it is because there is _actually_ a monster _actually_ destroying houses and _actually_ devouring children! Any messenger who brought such tidings falsely would be stripped of his post, or even exiled! You are telling me it is not so here? Why do you allow miscreants to spread hateful lies on your airwaves without repercussions?"

Tony opened his mouth to reply, then stopped, closing it again. He rubbed his neck, scowling in thought, then shrugged and turned towards Fury. "...you know what, that's actually a really good point. Why _do_ we allow that, Nick?"

"Hell if I know," Fury said.

"But anyway, the point is," Tony said as he turned back towards Thor. "Why the heck did you decide to go for advice to the person who is literally not even from this century? Why ask Steve and not me? I could have gotten you," here he pulled a small flat metallic device out of his pocket and fiddled with it for a few seconds. "21,600,000 results in 0.43 seconds. Seriously, all you had to do was Google that shit and hit 'I'm Feeling Lucky,' it takes you right to MOMA's website, all the information you could want."

"Who?" Thor said, perplexed.

" ' Mothers of Mutants of America, ' " Fury quoted in response to his confusion. "They're the number one pro-mutant advocacy group in the US."

"Here." Tony tossed the square of light metal and plastic to Thor, who caught it on reflex. "Section 2a: What Are Mutants? Should have all the relevant info for you."

Thor frowned and looked down at the device; pages of text were scrolling across it. It was some Midgardian script, not the runes that he was used to. "I cannot read this," he half-complained, half-apologized.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Seriously?" he said in an annoyed tone of voice. He took the tablet back and fiddled with it for a moment, then handed it back. "Thank god for text-to-speech, that's all I'm saying."

Thor glanced back at the tablet as a tinny flat, tinny female voice with strangely dissonant inflection began to read aloud from the miniscule speaker at the base of the screen. "_My Child Is A Mutant: What Does That Mean For Us?"_ it recited.

_Congratulations! You are one of the parents fortunate enough to have a child with meta-human-X-gene-expression, or MHXE, as it is known in the medical community. Your child is a mutant! There's no need to be afraid of that word, any more than there is a need to be afraid of mutants. Remember, every mutant is someone's child. And MOMA, partnership of parents of mutants all over America, is here to help during this time of transition for you both._

_MHXE has appeared in the population with increasing frequency over the past twenty years, and it is estimated that 1 out of every 100,000 children will eventually express some form of the gene. There are almost as many variants of MHXE as there are children..._

Here the text became somewhat more technical, explaining the nature of the "X-Gene" and how it altered the form and potency of those in whom it appeared; hence the name: mutants, _the changed ones._ Most of the basics matched up to the vague explanation Steve had struggled through the night before, although with much firmer confidence and more supporting detail. Thor knew little enough molecular-level soulcrafting, but the magical theory seemed sound enough, as far as he could tell.

As he listened with half an ear further through the text, certain phrases like "humanity's children" and "the future of mankind" leapt out at him. They were not unlike the speech about mutants that Loki had declaimed to him before the school, and he was startled to find fragments of Loki's thought in this mortal text. Could it be that there were others on Midgard who actually shared Loki's thoughts and beliefs? Perhaps there really was more to it than Loki's delusional madness...

Another fragment of the text caught his attention, and made his stomach feel like it was bottoming out in his chest. ..._ keep in mind that even if your child's mutation is only just manifesting, this has always been a part of them - since the day they were born. It may seem like everything is changing, but your child hasn't really changed. They are still the child that you loved and raised for all these years. Now, more than ever, they need you; they need you to stand by them, even if no one else will._

"...pretty heavy on the 'Everyone is a special snowflake who is perfect just the way they are' glurge, but once you get past that, they're a pretty good resource," Tony was saying. "Anyway, the point is: Mutants. Not evil."

"So the mutants are not…" Thor fumbled for a word; _monsters_ was clearly unwelcome here. _Criminals_ didn't seem strong enough. He remembered a word from yesterday's broadcast, and grasped for it. "Not all terrorists, then?"

Fury shook his head. "Not only are most mutants not terrorists, most terrorists aren't mutants," he said dryly. "Trust me, the vast majority of terrorists are perfectly ordinary human beings."

"But the man on the radio spoke of killings," Thor said with a frown. "He said there was proof, that your own government knew it to be true."

Tony sighed. "Look, Thor, the mutant community isn't the kind of monolith you seem to think," he said. "Here's how it is. Say there's a hundred thousand mutants in the U.S. today. Of those, maybe one out of a hundred has any kind of mutation that's actually usable in any kind of a defensive - or offensive - capacity. The rest get weird cosmetic changes, or abilities so specific that they're hardly ever useful, like talking to dragonflies or being able to hear radio waves or whatever, or something even stranger than that.

"Of the ones that can actually be classed as 'super' human, they tend to be split into two factions. One is Charles Xavier's bunch - they call themselves the X-Men. Xavier's an idealist, a pacifist, he's committed to the idea of peaceful human-mutant coexistence and his people tend to follow his lead. They protect other mutants from threats, but they fight to protect humans too. That's the group Loki seems to have taken up with, and that's the group you so spectacularly introduced yourself to today."

So Loki had after all allied himself with mutants, but they were _peaceful_ mutants? This was too confusing. "You spoke of two factions. What of the other?" Thor prompted him.

Fury grimaced. "That's where things get ugly. 'Cause _not_ all mutants are big on the idea of coexisting peacefully with humans. They pretty much flat-out hate humans. They want a mutant-only society, or at least a society with mutants on top, with humans safely dead or enslaved or otherwise out of the way. The biggest gang calls themselves the Brotherhood. They're led by a man named Erik Lensherr, and _he's_ got a rap sheet that reads like a natural disaster. The rest of the Brotherhood are more powerful or less, but all dangerous."

"Now I see," Thor said, face lightening as he nodded agreement. "So _those_ mutants are the evil ones!"

It seemed clear enough, but Tony winced and covered his face with his hand, and Fury's scowl only darkened. "You know what?" Tony said, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. "Sure, why not. Let's just go with that. Yes, the Brotherhood are evil mutants."

"Hell, no," Fury snapped. "I'm not going to just 'go with that,' leaving _him_ with half an explanation rattling around his brain is what got us into trouble the first time!" He turned to Thor.

"I do not understand," Thor protested. "You just said that these 'Brotherhood' despite and viciously attack humans. How are these not the acts of evil beings?"

"It's never that simple," Fury said. "See, more mutants are being born every year. But the social ethos hasn't exactly caught up with the change. Mutants - even the 'good' mutants, like Xavier's bunch, or the harmless ones who aren't involved on either side at all - are the target of some pretty brutal levels of prejudice."

"It's not so bad in the cities," Tony added, coming in on the explanation again. "And there are a few groups like MOMA, that do their best to advocate for mutant rights. But out in the sticks… it's not unusual for mutants to be targeted by hate groups, attacked or even killed. So yeah, some of the mutants who join up with Magneto's gang probably do it because they really are just psychopaths. There's some in every group, after all. But most of them aren't. They do it for protection, because they're afraid of being hurt… or because it's too late for that, and now they're angry. Really, really angry, and they see it as their only way of getting back."

"But why?" Thor asked, bewildered.

"Why what part of it?" Tony repeated back at him.

"Why are mutants so hated and feared, as you say," Thor attempted to clarify, "if they are truly as harmless as they claim? Why would humans despise them, if not in response to the evil inside them?"

He'd said something wrong again; he could tell it by the way Tony and Fury exchanged another one of those looks. "That's… not how it works, Thor," Tony said.

"Not how what works?"

"Not how racism works," Fury answered.

It was another one of those loaded words again, the ones that Fury or the others said as though the word alone should explain everything, but in fact explained nothing. "I do not understand," he said.

That prompted another double wave of surprised consternation among his listeners. "Oh, hell no," Tony said, backing up a step and raising his hands as if in surrender. "How much do I _not_ want to be having the racism talk?"

"Well, good on you, Stark, that _you_ don't have to," Fury snapped at him, and turned back to Thor. "Ugh. Listen, Thor, do you… you, Asgard, do your people have any kind of… underclass? People who have been historically discriminated against."

"Do you mean, criminals?" Thor asked.

"No, not individuals, whole sub-groups. You know, people that the rest of society treats as punching bags?" Tony suggested. "Either because they talk funny, or have different color skin, or come from the wrong side of the rainbow bridge, maybe? People that you just _know_ aren't as good as regular folks?"

Thor shook his head. "There is nothing like that in Asgard," he said.

Fury's eyebrows went up, and he looked skeptical. "Really," he said.

"Really?" Tony echoed. "No history of systematic oppression, enslavement, displacement, massive immigration from one country to the next causing resentment among the natives, that sort of thing? No reservations or ghettos where some group is kept apart from the rest? Nothing breeds racial tensions like systematic exploitation, y'know."

"Of course not!" Thor said indignantly. "In Asgard, every person is honored and respected in their own right. This kind of injustice would never stand. There is no group of people that is wronged, or hated simply for what they are -"

"What about the Jotuns?" Fury asked.

The question slammed into Thor like a brick wall, and he stuttered to a stop. _What about the Jotuns?_

It was so simple a question, and yet that was all it took to make Thor feel as though he was turned inside out, all of his confidence and assurances suddenly turned on their head. "That is not the same…" he began to say, but his voice died away as he caught the next words before they fell from his mouth. _… because you speak of peoples who are unfairly oppressed, and the Jotnar are not **people.**_

Were they not, though? Was that not the root of his conflict with Loki on the rainbow bridge, that terrible night in Asgard? _You can't kill a whole _race,_ Loki! _ Thor had shouted, and Loki had looked surprised, even laughed like it was funny. _Why not?_ Because it was not just, that was why not. Regardless of what Laufey and his cronies had done, the rest of the Frost Giants were not Laufey, and an entire race of people did not deserve to suffer for the crimes of one.

Odin had said he had done the right thing, even though the price of derailing Loki's murderous scheme had been the destruction of the Bifrost. Everyone agreed that the damage inflicted by the Bifrost upon Jotunheim was sufficient punishment for what the Frost Giants had tried to do, and that there was no need to do any more. The matter was over and done with, finished and put aside.

But there was a great stride between accepting that the Jotnar had the right to continue living, and the great injustices that Fury and Tony were speaking of. Frost Giants were not set apart merely because of some cruel whim of the Aesir. The Frost Giants might be people, but they were savage, brutal and bloodthirsty. They had greedily tried to take what was not rightfully theirs, and so they could not be allowed to roam at will among the Nine. It was not _discrimination_ to think of them so, because it was _true._

Yet even in his own head these truths rang thin and hollow, and Thor felt a great uneasiness about them; he did not quite dare to speak them before the others. "Where did you hear that name?" he asked instead, and his voice sounded weak even to his own ears.

Fury was watching Thor closely, like a cat watches a mouse that might bolt at any moment. "You forget that Loki was our guest for almost a month last year," he said. "While he was here, he told us quite a bit about frost giants."

"I would hope you knew better than to trust anything _he_ said on the subject," Thor said, even as he wondered with sudden unease what _else_ Loki had said during that time. And about whom.

"Well, of the two of you, he's the one who's actually a frost giant, so I'd think he'd know more about them than you would," Tony pointed out.

Fury gave a little shrug, as if conceding the point. "Frankly I found it much more interesting _how_ he said it. And what he didn't say."

Before Thor could demand to know what Fury meant by that - even assuming he would have explained - a red light began to blink from a device on Fury's wrist. He slapped at it with a growl, then peered at the display there and sighed. "Great," he said disgustedly to the room at large. "I've got to take this. Xavier's finally willing to talk to me, and we've got to try to work this out. I don't want a war with the mutants this week."

"Why not?" Thor asked. "From what you say, you outnumber them a thousand to one, and most of them are not even warriors. Surely you cannot fear that you would lose."

"Well, that's the thing about fighting wars against your own people," Fury told him. "_All _ the casualties are yours. So even if you win, you still lose."

He strode out of the briefing room, the door hissing shut behind him. Thor stared after him, feeling a little lost.

Tony did not follow Fury out of the room. When Thor looked back at him he was playing with something small and metal in his hand, that flashed a blue light at the top. He glanced up and met Thor's eyes. "Great, we can talk now," he said, slipping the device into the pocket of his shirt. "Was hoping we'd get a chance without old Cyclops present. Don't worry, they can't listen in on us."

Thor hadn't been worried. "Why did you want to talk without him?" he asked.

"Because SHIELD treats information like Scrooge McDuck treats dimes. They never let a single piece out of their hands without a fight," Tony told him. "I figured you'd have some questions, questions that Fury wouldn't answer. I told Steve I'd try to get you straight on the facts of the Loki issue, so here I am. Ask away."

The reminder of Steve brought Thor back to the topic at hand, back to all the questions Steve hadn't had answers for last night. "Steve said that you were there, with the party that went to confront my brother. He could not tell me any more - but perhaps you can?"

"Sure, buddy," Tony said with a nod. He hopped up on the edge of the railing, putting him at a comfortable height even as his feet swung below.

"So, Bruce and I were down in the lab, having one of our science marathons, when one of the special alarms went off - I have JARVIS set up to monitor the news channels for anything really bizarre, and some tiny podunk station in New York had footage of a dragon over Fallsburg that qualified. We got Black Widow on the line, she brought the jet around, and we went to check it out.

"We did some snooping around on the flight over, and we came up with a bunch of very weird, mostly conflicting information," Tony went on. "First, enough people had seen the dragon - and caught it on video, too - that we knew this wasn't a prank, or some redneck's UFO hallucination. But we'd also gotten enough info to learn what the dragon was chasing after - a military issue covert ops helicopter. That was enough to make us a little wary of what we'd be running into."

Thor took this in. "But surely, you would naturally go to the aid of your kingdom's fellow warriors?" he asked.

"Well, yes and no," Tony said after a brief pause. "See, here's the thing - us Americans are actually pretty picky about what soldiers can and can't do to citizens on U.S. soil. Unless they've been specifically asked by the local police departments to conduct a joint intervention, the military is not generally supposed to be conducting offensive operations in the middle of civilian populations. And there'd been no mention of anything like that on any of the police channels. So we knew something was hinky even before we landed."

"I see," Thor said, although - like so much else about Midgard - it seemed strange and unnatural to him. Why would civilians not trust the warriors entrusted to their own defense? "Please tell me more."

Tony shrugged. "Anyway, by the time we caught up with them, the chase was already over," he said. "The helicopter was a pile of wreckage on the hillside, and there was no sign of the dragon. What there _was_ a sign of was your brother - although we hardly recognized him at first; his skin was completely blue, so that it was only JARVIS' facial recognition software that ID'd him at all. This is a Frost Giant thing, I'm assuming?"

"You are correct," Thor said, a little stiffly.

"Anyway, so there he was, standing over a downed helicopter surrounded by the bodies - just unconscious, we found out later, although we didn't know that at the time - of US soldiers," Tony continued. "It didn't exactly look good. I went down to read him the riot act - fully prepared to bring out the Hulk if we had to, to get him to cooperate - before we caught sight of what he'd been protecting. Or rather, _who."_

Thor thought he had a few guesses, but he couldn't be sure. "Who, then?"

"There were a couple of mutant kids in the helicopter," Tony explained, presenting the turn in the story with a certain dramatic relish. "Y'see, it turned out that what the goon squad had _actually_ been up to was a hit-and-run raid on Xavier's school. God knows what they wanted them for - super-soldier conscripts, maybe, or maybe just lab animals."

"They wouldn't dare!" Thor was nearly speechless with fury.

"You know, I'd really like to believe they wouldn't," Tony said. "But it's not like it hasn't happened before. I'm telling you, it was damn surreal, seeing a couple of little kids hiding _behind_ the invader of New York, clinging to him for protection from _us._ Felt weird not being the good guys, for a change."

"Aye," Thor said, momentarily sunk in gloom. He wondered if the girl who had interrupted his battle with Loki had been one of the ones Loki had rescued that night - if so, it would certainly explain her astonishingly fierce devotion, and determination not to be separated from her savior. Although, Thor would have thought that a pupil of Loki's in magic would need no rescuing, so perhaps not.

"Well, anyway, we were still standing around arguing when Fury and Charles Xavier showed up," Tony concluded. "That made it official - Loki's living with, and apparently working with, the X-Men now, and had been for the past six months. Xavier vouched for him, and Fury signed off on it, so I guess that's that."

"This Charles Xavier," Thor said, frowning. "He is trustworthy?"

"I guess?" Tony shrugged. "I'd never met him in person before, but he does good work, protecting the public from threats like the Brotherhood and doing his best to help mutants and humans get along peacefully. He's one of those MLK types, believes in nonviolence and harmony, although I guess that sort of idealism is easier to hold onto when you've got a power that can sense an assassin at five miles out and freeze an army in its tracks with a thought."

"He can do such things?" Thor said, alarmed and intrigued, but whatever reply Tony was going to make was interrupted by the warning hiss of the door.

"Well, there's good news," Fury said, re-entering the room. The crackling tension that had suffused him before had ebbed slightly; he still seemed irritable, but not snarling or striking out savagely in all directions. "Xavier says he's talked to Loki, and they've agreed to regard this as a family matter, a spat between brother and brother."

"Oh," Thor said. "That is… good, I suppose?"

"Sure it's good," Fury said. "He _could_ have chosen see this as the opening salvo in a war between the X-Men and the Avengers, whom you represent. Or between the mutant community and the United States. Whom you _also_ represent. _Or_ between Earth and Asgard."

Thor was taken aback. "But I never meant it to be that!" he protested. "I acted only on my own behalf - I never intended to start an act of nations!"

Fury gave him a piercing glare that reminded Thor overwhelmingly of Odin. "Are you kidding me?" he growled. "_You_ are the prince of a sovereign realm. Everything you _do_ becomes an act of nations. Why do you think you can just do whatever you want with no repercussions?"

"Oh," Thor repeated, smaller this time. For the first time, the true scale of what had happened - what _he_ had almost caused to happen - truly sank in upon him. He should not have needed Fury to remind him of his position; he had spent enough time in the past month preoccupied by his duties as Prince Regent. Yet still he had clung to his 'prince' title, refusing to be named King - as though by doing so he imagined that he could put it down when he chose, go back to being 'just Thor,' the warrior and adventurer who could travel and carouse and pick fights whenever he pleased. And yet - had he ever been so free? Or had the weight and obligation of his station just been invisible to him before now, unseen and unfelt like a fish in water?

One thing was clear: He had fumbled badly in his duties both as prince of Asgard and ambassador to this new kingdom, the kingdom of mutants. "I must go back," Thor said, mind already racing ahead. "I must go back to make amends - speak with Loki again -"

"Oh hell, no," Fury said vehemently, interrupting Thor's train of thought. "You are not going anywhere _near_ Xavier's school, not anytime soon, possibly not ever. Consider this an interdiction. You've caused enough trouble there as it is, and while you may not have kicked off a war, the mutants have made it emphatically clear that you're not welcome there."

"But my intent is entirely peaceful!" Thor protested. "I must apologize, explain -"

"Uh, I'm actually with Fury here," Tony said. Thor turned towards him, crestfallen, and the inventor held up his hands. "Look, Thor, nobody is doubting your intentions -"

Fury grumbled a disagreement, but Tony ignored him. " - but good intentions may not be enough, here. I mean, I've never had a sibling, but even I can tell that there's a whole lot of charged history between you and Loki. And Loki himself isn't exactly what you call stable. If you go to confront him again, there's a distinctly non-zero chance that you're going to end up fighting. Again. And you can bet your hammer that the X-Men are going to come in on his side."

"Again," Fury grunted.

As much as Thor hated to admit it, Tony was right; no matter how determined he remained to... to _make things right_ things between them, Loki had always been able to turn his intentions awry. His brother used words like surgeon's tools, testing and probing and digging until they find a sensitive spot that, no matter how Thor tried to hang on to his calm, never failed to rouse his ire.

"But then what should I do?" It came out more plaintive than Thor would have liked. He wanted to _fix_ things - with the mutants, with Loki, with the trust he inadvertently damaged - but no one seemed to want to tell him _how._

"One thing's for sure," Fury said, and swept around a finger to point at him. "No more wandering around on your own. Obviously, you need more baby-sitting than I can supply." His one eye moved to Tony. "Stark -"

"Oh, come on," Tony protested, and Thor felt more than a little insulted. His presence was not _that_ much of a burden.

Tony glanced at his face, and something of his offense must have shown, because Tony hastened to apologize. "Nothing personal, Thor buddy. It's just that I'm really not the, uh, most responsible of people to begin with. I have enough trouble even keeping _myself_ out of trouble, let alone anybody else."

"That's true enough," Fury commented.

Tony snapped his fingers, expression brightening into a sudden epiphany. "I know! I am a genius. Why don't you," and he turned back to Thor, "go and see that sexy-brained girlfriend of yours? Doctor Foster, Jane Foster wasn't it? She is _way_ more responsible than me, I'll bet if anyone can keep Thor in line, she can."

"I had wanted to see Jane again," Thor admitted. "But I was hoping to be rid of my business with Loki first, that I would not bring danger behind me when I went to visit."

"Great! That's settled then. Told you I was a genius," Tony said cheerfully, clapping his hands. "I'll give you a lift. Is Dr. Foster still out in that West Virgina lab you think we don't know about, Nick?"

Fury sighed and rubbed at his brow. "Yes, she is. You know what? Let's just do that. The sooner I have you out of my hair, the better."

"Capital." Tony strolled towards the door, and after a moment of indecisive hovering, Thor followed after.

"Look, Thor, there's something else you need to know," Tony said, stopping in the corridor and turning to face him. His expression, normally sardonic and playful, was unusually solemn. "Something came up during the confrontation with Loki and the mutants that's pretty important to the events of last year's invasion. And you need to know it, and I got a feeling nobody else is going to tell you."

"And what is that?" Thor asked, though a cold dread was beginning to creep into his spine. Little good ever came of 'something very important you must know,' in Thor's experience.

"So it wasn't exactly as smooth and hassle-free as I made it out to be earlier. To be blunt, we were standing around arguing, mostly wanting to know why the hell we should just Loki walk free after everything he'd done. Then it turns out that Fury had given custody over to Xavier way back when SHIELD was holding him right after the invasion; and _he_ said that someone had used psychic surgery to do a number on Loki's mind."

_"What?"_ Thor demanded. He nearly reeled backwards, bowled over by the force of the revelation. "Is this true?"

"How should I know?" Tony grimaced. "Look, I'll tell you what I _do_ know, and then you'll be about as well off as I am. Xavier's a telepath, a psychic himself, and the people who keep track of these things all agree he's pretty powerful. He's probably one of the few people on Earth who's actually qualified to know these things. Now, humankind per se isn't necessarily Xavier's number one priority, but he _is_ a defender of earth, seeing as his people _live_ on it. So I can't really see why he'd have any motivation to help out the Chitauri or their leader. And Fury backed him up on it, so I'd say that it's probably about as confirmed as we can get it at this point."

Thor sat stunned, torn between conflicting feelings. How did Loki always manage to do this to him, even when he was not present? If this was true, then all his hopes were answered: Loki was not lost in darkness, had not committed irredeemable acts of evil. Loki could be forgiven - _no_, not even that, would not _need_ to be forgiven.

But -

If true, it also meant that Thor had done him a grave injustice. Had accused him, manhandled him, _attacked_ him on every meeting since Loki's fall. If true, how could Loki possibly forgive _him_?

It was at once too wonderful and too terrible to contemplate. Thor grasped instead for equivocation - uncertainty. "If my brother truly was being... controlled," Thor began, "why would he not _tell_ me so?"

"Uh, duh?" Tony gave him a weird look. "I mean, I'd imagine that whoever was remote-controlling him wasn't too interested in giving away the game."

"No, of course not." Thor waved this away impatiently. "I mean _after_. If he was on Earth, under the protection of this Xavier - if this abomination was discovered, and my brother freed - he came to me on Asgard after that! Surely at that time, his mind must have been his own. Why would he not tell me that it had been enslaved?"

Tony shook his head, then appeared to change his mind and gave a little half-shrug. "Well, far be it for me to psychoanalyze the crazy alien," he said. "But if I had to take a guess, maybe because he thought _you wouldn't believe him?"_

Thor opened his mouth to hotly deny it, but then shut it again. As much as it stung, he could not entirely say Tony was wrong. If Loki had come to him with this news right on the heels of the Battle of New York - alone and unsupported by the word of any others - Thor likely would have thought it nothing but a clever-worded excuse. After all, what proof could Loki offer but his own word, when his own trustworthiness was what was in doubt?

The truth was that after his banishment, Thor had lost all certainty and trust - not only in Loki, but in his own understanding of Loki. He had gone for so long, so many years, blithely thinking all was well. Right up until the Warriors Three appeared on Earth with news of Loki's treachery, Thor had sensed nothing wrong at all. If such a great black storm of pain and anger and madness could brew right under Thor's nose for so long, how could he have any faith at all in his own ability to read Loki's reactions? How could he hope to explain his brother's motives to others, when it had become clear that he had never known Loki's motivations in the first place? He did not know where the break had begun and so he was forced to assume that all he had known of Loki was wrong, that for the hundreds of years of their brotherhood he had never truly known Loki at all. When Loki reappeared in New York - wild, crazed, grinning and snarling and spitting venom - Thor had not known what to make of it; he had no choice but to take this Loki to be as real as any Loki he had ever known.

But what if it was not so? What if those three days on Midgard were the lie, the aberration, an untruth forced upon Loki from the outside? Then... then maybe all Thor knew was _not_ a lie; maybe the brother that Thor remembered was still within him. Maybe they could put this awfulness behind them and go back to Asgard, go back to the trust they once had been.

"You are saying my brother is innocent," Thor said, wonder in his voice.

Tony grimaced again. "Am I? I don't think I am, Thor," he said. "There's still too much we don't know and haven't been told. I don't think it's that simple. But I guess that's what I'm saying - that it's _not_ simple. That there's not just a toggle of 'good' and 'evil' and you can just slot Loki into one or the other."

Thor deflated a little. "I suppose not," he said, feeling suddenly weary. There was too much murkiness, too much uncertainty - had been, ever since he had come back to Midgard once more.

He needed some time to think, to sort everything out - to gain some kind of clarity. He longed to see Jane again, for her bright cheer and eminently sensible outlook had done more to calm and ground him than little else he'd ofound.

_Jane._ Soon he would get to see her again, touch her again, smell her hair. Technically he had spoken with her briefly a few times since his return to Asgard, through her micro-portal generating machine. But those had been a poor substitute for life, the picture grainy and flat, the sound distorted and degraded. Midgard and Asgard were not in temporal conjunction right now, and the disjoint and lag between their worlds made conversation almost impossible; the best he'd been able to do was to pass on a few most vital messages. He'd last talked to her a week ago, telling her of the progress being made in rebuilding Asgard; of course, he'd told her when the siege was broken and Malekith defeated. When Loki had fallen.

Now it seemed he must recant his words, and tell her that his brother was not dead at all; to think that he had been on Midgard all this time, and Thor had not known! Jane might have been in danger, all unknowing - but it seemed not. Loki had made no move to harm her... perhaps he never had meant to. Jane had been safe, with no need for protection by Thor.

A fragment of Loki's jeering voice drifting back to him, coming with clarity through the heated blur that had been their argument. _Congratulations, Thor, you officially **have it all.**_

Loki was wrong, Thor thought in a burst of rebellious resentment, if he thought that rulership of Asgard was the pinnacle of Thor's desire. He had long since outgrown the childish desire for crown and glory. But in a sense, Loki was also right, in ways he never suspected. Everything in Thor's life was going right. Midgard was safe - without needing any great deeds from him to make it so. Loki was alive - and Loki was _not evil._ Thor never thought he could have hoped for such a blessing. And now he was going to be reunited with his beloved, Jane.

So why - Thor wondered - why, if everything was going so well, was he left feeling so desolate?

* * *

><p>~to be continued...<p>

Author's Notes: We're just going to ignore the fact that Thor was able to read the text on the door a few chapters ago but can't read the text here. Just assume that he was narrating to the audience what he saw without being able to decipher meaning from it...


	5. Chapter 4

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Author's Notes:** Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to _A Villain State of Mind_ and directly follows _Cover Up the Sun._

Thor reunites with his beloved Jane. It doesn't quite go as planned.

* * *

><p>He had been wrong about Midgard, Thor thought as he watched the landscape scrolling under the tiny window in this small metal craft. It was not all cities and wastelands, after all; there were great expanses of verdant greenery, as well. It was comforting to Thor's eyes, accustomed as he was to Asgard's temperate climate, to see such abundant plant life outside the mortals' sprawling metal and concrete cities.<p>

The small craft he rode belonged to Tony, Thor was given to understand; Iron Man had loaded him aboard it and bid him goodbye in a nearly nonstop flurry of chatter, pausing only to give a quick spate of instructions to the servants. Thor did like Tony Stark, but it was exhausting to be around him, at least if you wanted to get a word in.

Now he was descending onto the blacktop of a small airstrip, only a handful of other such vessels waiting on the ground or circling for their chance to land. The crew of the airship ushered him onto a gangplank, directing him down a long bare hallway until he approached a metal gate; there, he saw a welcomingly familiar figure. Dark-haired and petite, with liquid eyes and a smile that lit up her face when she saw him, clutching a large paper sign that said THOR on it; _Jane._

_Two_ familiar figures, for Jane had brought Darcy with her - jumping up and down and tugging her friend's arm, pointing at Thor as though the older woman could possibly have missed him. They both greeted him with glad cries of welcome, and as he strode past the flimsy barrier of the gate he swept them - first Jane, then Darcy more briefly - into an engulfing hug.

It was good to see Darcy again, as she was one of his first friends on Earth and an unending source of fun, but even more so to see Jane. Her kindness to him in his first days on Midgard stood out in his memory, engraved in stone as some of the most important days of his life. And it didn't hurt, of course, that she was very, very beautiful as well.

He was a little curious about how they are going to get to their end destination; as it turned out, Jane had her own car. It was one of the things he admired about her, that she was not only clever, but very competent and self-sufficient in many ways that most women Thor knows in Asgard (with the exception of Sif) were not.

"It's about an hour's drive from here to Green Bank," Jane said as they fussed around making various preparations within the vehicle. "It's way the heck out in the middle of nowhere, which I guess is the point... SHIELD likes it because they can keep everything secret, and well, at least light pollution isn't a problem. It isn't quite as clear a view as you can get out in the Southwest - the elevation is much higher there, the air thinner and clearer - but it's still pretty darn good. It can get a bit lonely, though."

"At least there's internet," Darcy chipped in. "And we get a _huge_ house all to ourselves. Wait till you see it. It's even got a hot tub out back!"

Jane laughed. "Better than a trailer in the middle of a field, that's for sure!"

By mutual agreement Thor took the back seat of the car, as it would provide him with the most room - plus Darcy claimed she got "carsick," although why she would want to ride at all in a vehicle she was allergic to Thor did not know. Jane started the car and they made their way quickly out the airport - truly, once they had left the facility behind, there was not much else to the village, and they were soon out of the buildings on wood-flanked roads.

From a ground-level view, the green forest was even denser than Thor had thought from the air; the ground was rolling and hilly, forcing the road to wind among shadowed valleys to make its assent. The green was not only in the canopies of the trees but in the undergrowth below - even the tree-trunks were covered in green growing moss. As they crested a ridge and passed for a moment through a flat, empty valley Thor caught a glimpse of a massive, metallic disk like a coin or bowl standing off to the left, needle-like antenna stretched towards the sky. "That's the Green Bank telescope," Jane commented proudly as they passed it by. "Strongest radio telescope in the world!"

"This is a fair land," Thor remarked, admiring the verdant landscape as it scrolled by. He would have liked to bring the Warriors Three hunting here, although he doubted the landscape could support much larger than an elk or small mountain cat - some hunting trips were more for the scenery than the hunt.

"It's better than some places we've been, that's for sure," Darcy said, and made a sour face. "Last October we schlepped out to London, and it was rain and fog the whole time we were there. Except for when it was _freezing_ fog. I didn't even know fog _could_ freeze."

"It was a great trip though," Jane said animatedly. "We went out to Edinburgh to check out some really incredible readings. Resonance spikes, gravity subluxations, alterations in the boundary components like I've never seen before, from sources that I never even imagined - we're _still_ crunching through the data on that."

Doing some quick calculations in his head, Thor was startled to realize that the date of their wet journey coincided with the Convergence - that must have been the source of Jane's amazing phenomena. At the time, of course, Thor had been a little more preoccupied with Malekith the Accursed, who sought to use the moment of harmony between the realms to spread the Deepness all throughout the Nine Realms and plunge the lighted universe into darkness.

Would have succeeded, too, but for the aid of Loki.

He wrenched his thoughts away from these familiar, morose maunderings. "That sounds exciting," he said instead. Somehow he doubted it would please Jane to hear that her wonderful research data had near come at the cost of the end of the universe. "It is always good to travel, to have adventures and make new friends."

"Oh, um, yeah," Jane said, sounding a little startled. "Making new friends, I'm - I'm all for that."

Darcy laughed out loud. "As if," she said, turning in her seat to perch upon the back and grin conspiratorily at Thor. "Jane isn't into the whole 'meeting new people,' scene - not when she's been pining for you."

In the small rearview mirror Thor saw Jane's face turn bright red, even as she sputtered a denial. "I have not been _pining!"_ she protested.

Darcy scoffed. "Please, you haven't been on a date in three years," she said. "What would you call that?"

"I would call it 'I've been focusing on my career!' " Jane replied hotly. "Because I have! It's not like I NEED a man in my life to - to complete me, or anything like that. I've been just fine by myself. Focusing on my work. Work!"

Darcy caught Thor's gaze, still grinning, and mouthed clearly to him _ Pining!_ before she turned back around in her seat.

The atmosphere inside the car was tense and awkward for the next few minutes, but Thor couldn't but smile, fueled by the small warmth that bubbled up from inside him without cease.

* * *

><p>They rolled up at last to, as Darcy had promised, a fairly grand structure for this Midgardian village (though still quite modest by Asgardian standards;) it was a rambling wooden building with three stories under steeply peaked roofs. A number of vehicles were scattered around on the grass and gravel in front of the house; a few of these were sleek, black and sinister-looking, leading Thor to suspect they were of SHIELD make.<p>

"Well, home sweet home," Jane remarked as the car doors _thunked_ shut behind her. "Don't worry, it's actually completely modernized on the inside - pretty sure SHIELD revamped it for their own uses before they decided to install us here."

Since it was already growing dark, they headed into the house to attend to dinner. Jane and Darcy prepared a feast of rice, diced meat in sauces, and little bread-wrapped dumplings of meat and vegetables. The girls ate theirs with pairs of small wooden sticks, although they gave Thor a fork for his. Darcy also produced a jumbo-sized box of pop-tarts for dessert, and begged Thor to eat them all so she can record the event for posterity.

After dinner was finished it was still too early to retire, so Jane suggested they could all watch a movie together. Darcy seconded this idea enthusiastically, and ran off to her room to emerge with a small flat box. "I brought my copy of 'The Lion King!' " she exclaimed. "We've got to get you started on Disney, Thor, and you're just gonna love this one. It's all about kings and succession and stuff. It's basically Hamlet with lions."

"Or we could just show him 'Hamlet' instead," Jane objected, "I mean, if we want him to get a positive impression of Earth culture, Shakespeare might be a better place to start than Disney."

Darcy scoffed at that notion. "Well, I don't have a copy of 'Hamlet' in my bags," she said, "so let's just stick with Disney, okay?"

"I would much like to see this king of the lions," Thor put in peaceably, and the matter was settled.

Darcy put the movie on, and the three of them settled into the couch before the viewing box - Thor in the middle, Jane and Darcy on either side. Thor found the bright colors and stylized animation disorienting at first, but the rhythm of storytelling was familiar to him and he soon found himself drawn into the tale being told. There was a kingdom of animals, and a lion was indeed king - he had an heir, Simba, whom he was trying to teach the ways of kingship. Despite the alien setting, Thor found it easy to relate to Mufasa and his son.

There was also a brother - Scar - whose presence in the movie made Thor feel vastly uneasy. The scene where Mufasa indirectly egged Simba into disobeying his father the king reminded Thor uneasily of when Loki had done the same to him, invading Jotunheim, and it came as no surprise shortly afterwards when Scar revealed his wicked ambition.

By the time Scar banished Simba into the wastelands, Thor was fuming over his cruel treachery. "What a vile, traitorous beast this Scar is!" he exclaimed angrily. "A deceiver and a kinslayer who seeks to steal what he cannot gain rightfully, and allies himself with such wicked, debased creatures!"

Unexpectedly, Darcy voiced a disagreement. "I dunno. I always thought that they maybe had a point, you know? I mean, Scar's kind of a dick, but I felt sorry for the hyenas."

"I do not," Thor scowled. "I feel no pity for those who would harm a child."

"Yeah, but, think about it," Darcy said. "They're going along with Scar because he offers to give them what they want - and what is it that they want? Food. They're literally _starving._ I mean, there's the lions sitting fat and happy at the top of the food chain, who get to eat all the antelope they want, and the hyenas get, what? Banished to live in a shitty pit of rocks in the ground for the crime of wanting to eat?"

Thor frowned deeply. "But the lions are hunters, who must work for what they eat," he said. "The hyenas are gluttons and thieves, who take what belongs to others."

"Well, that's not actually how it is in the wild," Jane spoke up, from her vantage cuddled against Thor's side. "Lions and hyenas are actually _both_ opportunistic scavengers - when you live in the wild you can't be that picky about food. Hyenas are actually quite efficient predators, who can bring down prey in packs with a better success ratio than lions. Lions will scavenge from a hyena's kill just as often as the other way around."

"Really?" Thor blinked, surprised. That was quite different from how the movie showed.

"Either way, the hyenas are part of the whole 'circle of life' too, aren't they?" Darcy added. "They're part of Mufasa's kingdom, so doesn't he have an obligation to them too? Where does he get off, condemning an entire species to slow starvation just because he doesn't like the way they live?"

"I..." Thor started to say, then his voice failed. Perhaps it was because the characters put him so much in mind of his own home - the wise king, the prideful prince, the sly, scheming brother - but his mind immediately leapt to Odin and the Jotnar.

Thor had always known that at the end of the war against Jotunheim, Odin had taken the Casket of Endless Winters away from the Jotnar. There had never been any reason to think, even for the moment, that this had not been a wise and just act - preventing the Jotun from spreading their evil across the other Realms.

Yet only since Thor had gone to Jotunheim in person, on that fateful disaster last year, had it ever occurred to him that that equation had another side. That removing the Casket had direct effects on the Jotnar themselves - not only passively, no longer allowing them to act as they wished, but actively, devastating their world and culture. Once he had returned to Asgard, he had through questioning confirmed it - without the Casket the Jotnar could not heal, could not repair their crumbling buildings, could not thrive. Without the Casket, they were consigned to a long cold decay.

If the Jotnar were part of the Nine Realms, and under the All-Father's authority, then did he have not the obligation to see to their welfare? If they were not, then by what authority over them could he dictate their actions? Surely it was not right to, as Darcy would say, condemn an entire species to slow starvation?

But... it was also true that Asgard had obligations to the other realms, to defend them from Jotnar aggression. Which duty took precedence? Odin-king was wise, far wiser and more experienced than Thor; surely he had a plan.

And yet... and yet...

Thor sat and struggled with these unaccustomed thoughts for the rest of the movie, and saw little of it.

* * *

><p>Despite his stormy thoughts it was a very pleasant evening in the company of his friends. After the movie finishes, Darcy begged off and excused herself to her room to, as she put it, get a jump on tagging everything. That left Thor and Jane by themselves on the couch, staring at each other over a small pile of throw pillows.<p>

"Um, we don't actually have a guestroom, sorry," Jane explained shyly, pulling the pillows and quilts into a stack. "I mean, we _have_ spare rooms, lots of them actually, but they don't actually have any furniture in them. Just Darcy's room and mine. Anyway, my bed is a full, so we can probably both fit if... you know, unless you'd rather sleep on the couch here. Or if you'd rather I did."

Thor had no intention of putting Jane out of her own bed, and said as much. She gave him one of those sweet, face-transforming smiles, and the conversation stuttered momentarily to a halt.

Truthfully, Thor found himself somewhat at a loss for what to say. Throughout the evening they had kept to light, easy topics, and Darcy's presence had offered a buffer (and an unending source of conversational topics without either of them having to exert themselves.) Now she is gone, and they are alone, and Thor is not entirely sure what to say.

It's not that he didn't know how to act around women - or even how to talk with them. It's just that he and Jane were from such different worlds, with so little, he was forced to admit, in the way of common ground. Most of the conversational plots that would draw out a lady of Asgard would mean nothing to Jane, and most things of Midgard Thor did not know enough to speak of. Nor did he suspect, the longer he got to know Jane, that she would be particularly interested in a detailed, graphic retelling of his hunts and battles.

Besides, he had at Darcy's prompting told many stories of Asgard in the car and over dinner. He didn't want Jane to think that he was capable only of talking or thinking about himself.

"How fares your research?" he said at last, before the silence between them could get too uncomfortable, and Jane's face lit up.

"Oh, I'm so glad I got a chance to tell you!" she exclaimed excitedly. "I finally pinned down how to universalize the microportal generator! With the right coordinates and a sufficient power source - we can bounce a signal not just to Asgard, but anywhere in the universe! Anywhere we can see, at least," she amended.

Thor found himself smiling, infected by her enthusiasm. "And this is a good thing?" he asked.

"Are you kidding? This is great news! This is FTL communication, right here! Maybe it's not such a big thing here on Earth, where the distances aren't really big enough to cause a time lag - but this'll be huge for NASA, and when we finally get to the point of sending out manned expeditions beyond our own solar system - well, this is solving a huge problem before it even begins!"

"That is wonderful," Thor told her warmly.

"Of course..." Her face fell. "It would have been nice if we could use the same technology to actually transport _people,_ and things, not just signals. But I keep running up against the boundary constants... I haven't made any progress in months, not since the microportal breakthrough. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a dead end." She sighed. "Guess we won't be beaming people up and down between here and Asgard anytime soon. I had really hoped..."

She seemed so despondent, Thor looked for a way to reassure her. "Don't fret, Jane," he said in a comforting tone. "That is nothing for you to worry about. Now that the Bifrost is repaired, there is no need for you to have a Bifrost of your own. I can come and go at any time I wish, without needing anything from you."

"Oh." Jane's expression fell like shutters closing, face going expressionless and blank. "Right. I forgot."

Abruptly she rose from the couch, scooping the popcorn bowl up and making for the kitchen. "This gets really gross if it's left out," she said over her shoulder.

Confused, Thor waited on the couch for a few more moments, but Jane did not return; at length he rose from the couch and followed her into the kitchen, only to see her climbing the stairwell up to her room. "Jane?" he called after her. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Jane told him, but her voice lacked conviction. "I'm just tired, it's getting late. We should go to bed."

"Jane..." Thor followed her up the stairs, catching her arm halfway. "It is not nothing. You are offended. Why?"

Jane huffed out an exasperated breath, reaching up both hands to run through her hair, pulling it back away from her face. "I'm not angry with you," she told him, not entirely convincingly. "It's just... this is my life's work, you know? It doesn't feel very good, to be reminded that I'm just - drawing on cave walls, compared to what your people have already accomplished. That I could spend the rest of my life laboring to hack out a crude version of the technology that Asgard has already perfected. My whole life, my whole _civilization -_ just a footnote when compared to yours!"

"That is not true," Thor protested. "Midgard has come astonishingly far, in the last few hundred years. Your people have done incredible work, considering your limitations."

_"Limitations?"_ Jane repeated in a disbelieving huff. "Thanks for that, Thor. Thanks a lot."

"Jane, all things have their proper time and place in the order of things," Thor tried to explain. When Thor had been born, Asgard at the height of its power, the mortals had still been living in thatch huts and farming with sticks. They had come far in merely Thor's lifetime, but there was still so much further to go. "Your world is still untried, still young and immature in the wider scheme of the Great Tree. There are some things that you Midgardians simply cannot hope to do.

"Truthfully, perhaps it is better so," he added, thinking gloomily of the wreckage of Jotunheim, the terrible scar that the Bifrost had torn across that dreary planet. And that while it was under the command of Asgard itself! "It is a great and terrible power, a heavy... burden of responsibility. Midgard is not ready for this knowledge."

"What is this?" Jane demanded. "What are you even _saying?_ You don't get to make that call. _You_ don't get to decide what technology - what knowledge - we are and aren't allowed to have!"

"I only speak out of concern for you," Thor said, hurt. He'd had first-hand knowledge of just how deeply the wrong technology, in the wrong hands, could scare.

"Well this 'concern' is sounding an awful lot like 'control!' " Jane said, exasperated. "We're not _children_, Thor! We're not children, and you're not our parent. You don't get to make decisions about my safety and my person without even consulting me first -"

The conversation seemed to be veering wildly away from him, but Thor did not miss the shift of pronouns, from _we_ to _I._ "What is this about, Jane?" he demanded.

"This is about Tromso!" Jane shouted, one hand yanking at her own hair in nervous frustration. "This is about you - and SHIELD - shuffling me off in a corner and not telling me what was going on, while _my world_ was in danger - while my world was under threat that _I_ could have done something about! Nobody on this planet knows more about portal energies than me. But they'd apparently rather let uncontrolled portals rip the world apart than ask for help from _Thor's_ girlfriend!" She pulled her wrist free from Thor's grasp and stormed up the stairs.

Thor was stunned; he had no idea Jane still carried resentment over that incident. They had spoken through the communications device since then, after all, and Jane had made no mention of it. He'd assumed she had understood the necessity, understood the risks involved. "Jane, Loki had made threats against you," Thor tried to explain, pursuing her once more. "I only wanted you to be safe -"

Jane stopped in the door to her room, whirling to face Thor again. _" Stupid _isn't _safe! "_ Jane nearly screamed. "Yeah I've heard about your brother, Loki, _ god of lies?_ The one who's a shapeshifter, and a liar, and an illusionist? It never _at any point_ occurred to you to think that I might be better able to protect myself from him if I had any idea he was back on the planet - so that I'd know to be on guard if he approached me disguised as a stranger? I guess I'm just lucky that he apparently considered me beneath his notice, _just like everybody else did!_ "

For a moment Thor was breathless, at a loss for words. He'd never thought of such a danger, although truthfully he should have; he had been utterly oblivious to this possibility. As, it appeared, he had been oblivious to Jane's deep-buried hurt. "I... I never meant -" he began, stammering.

"Yeah Thor, you didn't mean a lot of things," Jane shot back; her voice was more controlled now, although her eyes glistened with angry tears. "I get that. Like you didn't mean it when you said you'd be back for me, when you promised to come see me as soon as you got back to Earth. Like you didn't mean it when you pretended that you _cared_ about stupid little Earthling me."

"I do care about you!" Thor protested. "Jane! I -"

Jane slammed the door in his face. Thor stood dumbfounded, words dying in his throat. He could have kept the argument going, of course; could have shouted through the door, or even forced the door open and barged in. But even he was wise enough to know what a mistake that would have been, so instead he retreated back downstairs. Tomorrow he would try again, try to explain to Jane that she was mistaken.

Darcy was lounging on the couch; she was wearing the same shirt as before, but her stiff blue pants had been replaced with a pair of fluffy slippers and felt trousers, decorated with pink hearts, white kittens, and writing that Thor could not read. She raised her head as Thor wandered disconsolately back into the living room. It was too much to hope that she had not heard that argument; and that was confirmed when she said, "Sooo, trouble in paradise, huh?"

"I do not believe this," Thor huffed, seating himself also on the couch with a thump. "Has all of Midgard gone mad? I have been here less than two of your days, and so far every one of my allies has found reason to be angry with me."

Darcy opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and cleared her throat. "Yeah... y'know, I could say something here, but I'm not gonna," she said, obviously untrue, since she was already saying _several _things. She added, "I'm just going to point out something you might want to keep in mind."

"And that is?" Thor demanded.

"The common factor in all of your fuckups is _ you. " _ Darcy pushed back up from the couch and headed towards the room that was reserved for her. "Just sayin'."

She closed the door to her room behind her, leaving Thor alone in the living room with a jumble of pillows and blankets. It was clear he was not going to be welcome into anyone else's bedroom tonight; it would not be the most unpleasant night's sleep he had ever spent, but somehow one of the loneliest.

Thor slumped against the back of the couch, and buried his head in his hands.

* * *

><p>~to be continued...<p> 


	6. Chapter 5

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Summary**:  
>At the time, the lesson had seemed clear<em>: Your strength is not for your careless enjoyment alone. You must use it to protect those weaker than yourself.<em> At the time, Thor had felt as though he had completed a long and grueling journey of self-discovery. Now he wondered if he hadn't taken the first few steps on the road, then turned around, run back into the comfort of his familiar home and slammed the door behind him.

* * *

><p>It was a long night. Physically, Thor certainly had little to complain about; the house was warm, quiet and filled with a soft darkness that still allowed him to see his surroundings. The couch beneath him was quite soft - if narrow - with an abundance of pillows and quilts. He could always retire to the floor, if he had to, and still sleep in better luxury than on a hundred nights of more bitter camps.<p>

So it was not a physical discomfort that kept Thor awake, and chewed away at the edges of his thoughts. Instead it was a familiar, haunting sensation that he had not known since his banishment. A feeling of failure, and something deeper than failure, for a single failed effort could be righted. A single failure could not account for his somehow managing to drive away every one of his allies, his loved ones. This spoke of a failure of something more fundamental, of an intrinsic flaw or error in his very being.

It was a small comfort to heft Mjolnir in his hands and turn his fingers over the handle. Mjolnir still answered his call; he was not unworthy of it, according to the terms of Odin's geas. But Odin was not the only source of judgment, it appeared, in the universe.

Another night spent sleepless and empty, wondering at his place in the world. Somehow it was always Midgard that managed to do this to him. Hadn't the first time been enough?

_… Had _ the first time been enough?

The fact that he was sitting here, feeling an echo of the same empty desolation as when Mjolnir had failed to answer him, seemed to say that it had not.

At the time, the lesson had seemed clear: _Your strength is not for your careless enjoyment. You must use it to protect those weaker than yourself. _And he had done that, or tried to.

And his father's curse had been broken, Mjolnir had come to his call, and he had returned triumphant to Asgard. At the time, Thor had felt as though he had completed a long and grueling journey of self-discovery. Now, Thor wondered if he hadn't taken the first few steps on the road, then turned around, run back into the comfort of his familiar home and slammed the door behind him.

There had been little reason to dwell overmuch on it, once he was restored to Asgard and his role as Prince. His father, his friends, Mjolnir itself - all the universe seemed to line up to tell him that his work was complete, that he had done a good job, that he had learned his lesson. Now it seemed that his teaching had only barely begun - and that he'd left the path of learning behind when he'd left Midgard.

So. What lesson was it that was yet unlearnt?

He had definitely made a mistake in rushing in to battle with the mutants. That, Thor could admit with a guilty cringe. It was a mistake he had made before; when he had charged thoughtlessly into battle on Jotunheim, when he had leapt to battle the SHIELD agents his first time on Earth, when he had struck out at Iron Man and Captain America during his pursuit of Loki...

All right; this was a mistake he made _a lot._

Even Loki himself; he couldn't help the uncomfortable thought that if only he had tried harder with words, instead of leaping to blows upon his first encounter with Loki on the mountaintop, then perhaps Thor would have _noticed_ how strange and unlike himself Loki had been behaving. Perhaps he could have discovered the mystery of the mind-control earlier, before so much death and disaster had followed.

So much of his current woes came from his terrible predilection to jump quickly to combat, to let his muscles and his battle-training do the thinking. All right, then. He tried the vow on for size:_ I will no longer attack before I am myself attacked._

It was a good thought, and yet... it was not battle alone that had brought him trouble. His current woes with Jane had not their root in Thor's eagerness for battle; instead, they came from thoughtless words he had spoken that had hurt her unknowingly. And that, too, was a common source of woe: his argument with Loki at the school today had been peaceful, almost civil, until Thor had said something that drove him into a wounded rage. He was not even certain what he was that it had said - but that only confirmed, indeed, that he had not thought very hard before saying it.

A second vow, then: _I will think before I speak._

Well, then.

Was that enough?

It didn't feel right, didn't feel... complete. It was all well and good to say 'I will think,' when that told him nothing about _what_ he should think. There was still something fundamentally out of fit, some missing piece of the puzzle that he had not yet grasped.

_It's not that simple, Thor._

He was truly beginning to hate those four words; it seemed like every person he had spoken with since his return to Midgard had told him some variant on that sentence. And yet no one would explain to him _what else_ it was, except that it wasn't simple.

He was going to have to find this out himself.

But not, perhaps, _all by_ himself.

Thor never fully slept - his troubled thoughts and the unfamiliar territory would not allow him such ease - but he had long practice in taking what rest he could, and so he was awoken from a light doze by light coming in through the windows and noises coming from the adjoining kitchen. He heard the low murmur of female voices - Jane and Darcy were both awake, then - and the clank of metal cookware.

Time for breakfast, then. Thor's stomach growled - the meal from last night, while delicious, had left him feeling hungry again in a surprisingly short time. He pushed back the blankets and pillows from the couch, straightened his clothing, and went to wash his face and hands in the downstairs bathroom before he joined the company for breakfast.

Somewhat warily, Thor let himself into the dining room and took a seat at the table. Darcy sat at the other end of the table, crunching on some manner of cereal; since her mouth was full, she gave him an affable good-morning nod, which he returned.

Jane glanced over at him a few times while preparing food, but did not speak. Thor was just beginning to wonder if he should be doing something - offering to help, although he did not know how this kitchen was organized and if was not sure if he would just be in the way - when Jane turned off the stove, picked up two plates, turned around and marched over to the table. She set one down in front of Thor with a firm clunk - toasted bread and eggs, it looked like - and the other at the empty place in front of her. She took a deep breath, then looked at Thor with determination.

"I want to apologize for the things I said last night," Jane said, and the words were so unexpected that Thor was thrown utterly off-balance. "I've been building up a lot of frustration over how my research has been going lately and, well, it all just sort of spilled over. I had no right to take it out on you, and I'm sorry that I did."

Thor, who had been expecting a re-opening of the impassioned shouting from last night, barely had the presence of mind to stutter out "Th-think no more on it, Lady Jane. All is forgiven."

Jane nodded firmly, and sat down to begin spooning up her eggs.

Truth be told, Thor thought that he had rather more to apologize for than Jane did, and this seemed to be the time for it. He took a deep breath of his own, trying to stitch his words together into something resembling an elegant tapestry, and began.

"Jane, I want to apologize as well," he said. "Not for my words of last night, but for the acts of before that caused you such pain. I did not realize that you were so hurt by my decision to keep you safe instead of bringing you into our counsels. Please understand, it is both my duty as Prince and my fondest wish as a man to protect, especially those who cannot protect themselves. It was only because I cared for you in the first place that you were put in such danger - and I _do_ care for you deeply, Jane -" of all the words that Jane had thrown at him last night, the implication that he did not love her was the one that stung the most. " - and therefore, neither my love for you nor my duty could not allow you to remain in danger."

Once finished, he looked hopefully at Jane for her reaction. Jane was looking down at her own plate, not meeting his eyes, and seemed to be struggling with herself. After a long moment she gave a nod, a small, flat smile, and said. "I accept your apology, Thor."

Thor paused. Although her words were forgiving, her manner was not, and Thor was flummoxed as to what could have caused this. Darcy looked between the two of them, sighed loudly, and dropped her spoon into her bowl with a splash. "Really, Thor?" she said. "That's what you're going with, 'I'm sorry I'm so awesome'? That you're just _too_ noble and caring and that's what you're sorry for?"

Thor blinked at her, confused. "I do not know what you mean," he said. "I have apologized -"

"Really?" Darcy said, crossing her arms on the table and leaning over them. " 'Cause that's not what I heard. What _I_ heard you say was, you don't think you actually did anything wrong, you don't plan to do anything to fix it, and you'll probably do it again next time. How exactly is this an apology again?"

Thor gritted his teeth. As fond as he was of the mortal girl, she was making this process much more difficult than it needed to be. "Darcy, perhaps you should absent yourself," he said. "This is a matter between Jane and myself -"

"No, no, you know what I think?" Jane interrupted. "I think this is Darcy's house too, Darcy's kitchen. So she can stay if she wants to." She had crossed her arms over her chest - and her legs, too, one foot tapping on the leg of her chair - and two high spots of color had appeared in her cheeks.

Feeling unjustly tag-teamed, Thor opened his mouth to disagree, then paused with it still open. _I will think before I speak,_ he reminded himself. If Jane was insistent upon Darcy remaining here, that meant she agreed with what Darcy said. Why then could she not simply say so herself?

Because, Thor realized, she cared about _him_ in turn - and being as kind a soul as she was, she found it difficult to speak harsh words to those she loved, at least without the heat of anger to fuel her. It was easy to stand in defiance against an enemy; much harder to muster that same fighting spirit against a loved one. That, at least, Thor had no trouble understanding.

Jane wished to have her friend nearby as a support and backup, for the blunt and outspoken younger woman had no qualms about saying the words that Jane herself struggled to articulate. And if both of them were in agreement that Thor's apology was somehow insufficient, he realized, then he had no choice but to reconsider his words.

Thor sighed. "Jane, I am not sure what to say," he said, subdued. "My actions have hurt you and for that I am truly sorry. But I cannot see how I could in good conscience have acted otherwise. I love you, I worry for you, and if you are in danger I must take action to mitigate that danger." He paused for a moment, running his mind over the argument of last night. "I admit… I failed to consider the possibility of Loki approaching you in disguise. That was my lapse, and I am sorry."

Jane frowned. "But Thor, don't you see that's exactly the problem?" she said, and Thor did _not_ see. "You acted unilaterally, like you had full command of the situation, when it turns out you _didn't._ You say you didn't consider the possibility, but _I_ might have, if _you had asked me_. It's not the fact that you want to protect me that I have a problem with - it's that you made decisions about my welfare _without consulting me at all!"_

Her small hand struck the surface of the table, letting out a startlingly loud bang_. "That_ was an insult to both my courage and my intelligence. If you had come to me, told me of the danger, then maybe we could have worked out some compromise - maybe I could have been squirreled away in some remote facility apart from where Loki was being held, but still keeping in touch by phone or video, so that I could work on the problem alongside SHIELD's scientists. Or maybe we could have done something else. The point is, _you didn't ask. _ I am not some _treasure_ you can put in a vault and guard, Thor; I am not something you can take out to play with when you're on earth and put away the rest of the time. If this is going to work - if _you and me_ are going to work - then you have to treat me as your _partner."_

Thor dropped his head in a slow nod, abashed. He truly had underestimated Jane - as he kept on underestimating those around him, both mortal and not. "I understand," he said, voice subdued. "I am sorry, Jane. I never meant such disrespect. We can hope that the situation will not arise again - but if it does, I will absolutely take your counsel before deciding how best to act."

Jane let out a forceful breath and sat back in her chair, the harsh tension draining out of her face and body. "That's all I ask," she said, and then she smiled, that heartrendingly lovely smile that Thor loved so much. "I accept your apology, Thor. I forgive you."

And this time Darcy _did_ leave the room, with a knowing grin and a thumbs-up to Jane that Thor studiously ignored, so that they could finish their reconciliation in privacy.

Breakfast time turned to lunchtime in the peace and quiet of the house, broken only by the tinny noise of the television in one room. Despite the presence of Jane and Darcy, Thor was hyperaware of how empty the space around them otherwise was - miles of greenery and empty road between them and another human. It was like being on a camping expedition, but with all the comforts of home. It was extraordinarily peaceful, and just what Thor needed to think.

It had been easier, in a way, to face against Loki during the Chitauri invasion and plead with him to return home. As much as Thor had still clung stubbornly to hope - to the resolution to never give up on his brother - at the time, Loki had made no sign of relenting. That his heart might soften, that he might return to Asgard in friendship, was a potent daydream, but only a fantasy. Thor might wish for it, but did not really have to worry about the logistics, as they were unlikely to ever really be an issue.

Things were different now. Now, there was the possibility that Loki might actually be relenting from his evil ways… there was the possibility that he might actually, some day, come home. And that forced Thor to consider, in ways he hadn't had to before, just how many difficulties were going to be involved with that.

Even before his return to Midgard at the head of an invading force, Loki had committed crimes against Asgard. In the desperate hour of Malekith's siege, Thor had promised Loki a pardon if he would lend his aid, and Thor had no intention of retracting that offer; both his love for Loki and his honor demanded that he uphold it. But Loki had his share of enemies and detractors, who would not be happy to see the second prince's return. Thor commanded Asgard's forces - for now - but his position was hardly a secure one, and throwing his reputation behind Loki's would weaken it further.

As of now, Asgard did not know the whole story of Loki's fall, nor of his past. The official announcement told of Loki's death as a tragic hero sacrificing his life to save Asgard from the Dark Elf invasion, and made no mention of his Jotun heritage. If Loki returned, would he allow the cover story to stand, or would he insist on making the whole truth known? Would he be willing to return to a life of lies, after the lie that he had been told his whole life had been so painfully revealed to him?

Thor knew his people well, and knew that they would always be fonder of a dead martyr than a live traitor. In that, he could understand where Loki had gotten his wild idea that Thor loved him better dead than alive, although it still hurt him deeply that Loki would think Thor's love for him so shallow. Loki was unpredictable, contrary; Thor could not know how he would react if returned to Asgard, whether he would make peace with the kingdom and its people or whether his restlessness would inevitably start stirring up chaos and discord once more.

All these things Thor was willing to face unflinchingly if it meant Loki's return to his side, and yet… and yet…

What if Loki did _not_ return to Asgard? What if he stayed on Midgard, as he had been, in peace? Could that happen? Would that be safe, would that be responsible, would it be the right thing to do for either of their realms? Would his alliance with the mutants lead to noble efforts, or further down the path into darkness?

He went looking for his friends and found them in the living room, Darcy engrossed with her handheld computer and Jane with a stack of notebooks, currently abandoned as she prepared yet more coffee in the kitchen. That was fine by Thor, as it was not actually Jane's advice he sought just yet.

"Lady Darcy," Thor began. "May I ask some questions of you?"

"Oh, so I'm _Lady_ Darcy now, am I?" Darcy muttered, as she propped her chin on her fist and set her elbow on the table. "Sure, what about?"

"You are a student of politics in this realm, are you not?" Thor asked. He was fairly certain he had heard her refer to herself as such before, although as usual for Darcy it had been buried in waves of disguising chatter that made it hard to grasp what exactly she meant by it.

Darcy looked at him, nonplussed. "Uhhh, sort of, yeah?" she hedged. "Political Science studies, that's me. I mean, actually technically I'm a double major now, Political Science and… another major that UNM doesn't actually have a name for, basically they just let me hang out with Jane and assist her with her stuff and count that as a major. But I finished out all the PoliSci requirements before I started this internship, so yeah, I think that counts even if I don't have my B.A. yet."

Most of that speech flowed by Thor like running water, and he let it. "I wondered if perhaps you could advise me on the politics of this kingdom," he said.

"Well, sure, I'll do my best," Darcy said, sounding delighted to be asked. "What did you want to know about?"

"Can you tell me of the _mutants?"_ Thor asked. "I have been told many things about them: that they are evil, that they are trying to poison America, although I have been assured that this is only a metaphor and no actual poison is involved, but I still do not know what I should believe."

Darcy blinked at him, eyes wide and startled behind her heavy black glasses frames. "Uh, wow, that's kind of a heavy topic," she said. "Why do you wanna know?"

Thor sighed. It seemed as though the time had come that he must explain the true circumstances of his return to Midgard, as reluctant as he was to break the idyll of his reunion with Jane. "I must know because the business of Asgard has become entangled with the fate of these mutants," he said. "You see, I recently discovered - through the gaze of all-seeing Heimdall - that my brother yet still lived."

Darcy gasped, hand flying to her mouth, and Thor hastened to add, "I understand that for you this news may be a dire portent, and I regret that I must break it to you; but please understand, that to me it is… it is…"

"No, no, Thor, I understand," Jane said quickly, placing the two mugs of coffee firmly on the table. "For your sake, I'm glad. That's good news."

"Aye," Thor said with a nod, relieved that he would not feel like he must either apologize for or defend his own tangled feelings to Jane. "For me as a brother, it is joyous news. But it does not end there, for he has not returned to Asgard. He was seen here, on Earth."

"Um, the same planet he tried to conquer last year?" Darcy chimed in uneasily. "That's… bad news."

"So I feared myself," Thor said, "and yet, I have but recently heard the revelation - told to me by my shield-brothers, whom I trust - that Loki was not himself during those dire events. That he was being controlled and manipulated by another, by means of foul mind-sorceries."

"So Loki is actually innocent?" Jane said, eyes widening. "That's great news!"

"I thought so too," Thor said dolefully. "But when I tried to speak to him at the school of mutants, we exchanged only words of anger, and almost came to blows. I have been barred from that place, and have no other way of reaching him. I fear our relationship may have been damaged beyond repair."

"That's… bad news…" Jane sighed. "Tell you what, Thor, why don't you just start from the beginning and explain everything?"

So he did.

To establish the proper context Thor had to go all the way back to the beginning; Jane knew some of the tale, but not all of it, and Darcy knew only fragments. He started with what they already knew: his disastrous raid on Jotunheim and subsequent banishment to Midgard. Loki's brief, disastrous kingship, and the Bifrost attack on Jotunheim leading to the breaking of the Bifrost itself.

The tale of the Chitauri invasion they already knew, and so he touched only briefly on Loki's furious, mad rampage, his capture and binding at the end of it, how he had attempted to bring Loki home with the Tesseract and failed. Those events led directly the invasion of Asgard by the dark elf army, and Thor's desperate plight with no defense against Malekith's dark magic.

His voice strengthened as he told them how Loki had returned to Asgard - of his own volition, when no one could have forced him - and found the key to breaking the Dark Elves' siege. How he and Loki had snuck out by the dark paths to Svartalfheim, luring Malekith in pursuit of his treasure; how Loki had feigned to betray Thor, stab him and incapacitate him and sell the coveted artifact back to Malekith for his own gain. How that betrayal had involuted on itself at the last moment, and Loki's cunning sabotage of the Deepness had turned it on its owner the instant he tried to make use of it to devour the light. How it had devoured him, instead, and brought all of dead Svartalfheim into nothingness along with him.

How Loki had died on that dark and barren plain, choking on his own blood from the wound the Kursed had given him, and how the collapsing realm had swallowed his body beyond all hope of retrieval.

Even now, knowing that it had all been a feint (a trick within a trick within a trick) and that Loki had survived and was alive and well now, the memory still hurt; still choked Thor with a grief now tinged with betrayed anger.

But he pushed past the remembered grief and continued on with his tale; how three days ago Heimdall had summoned him with the news that Loki had been seen on Midgard, alive. His journey back to this realm, the incredibly unhelpful first interview with Fury, the warm welcome he had received from Steve. His growing puzzlement over the _mutants,_ which everybody seemed to understand and nobody could explain. The broadcast (and as soon as he said Mannstrom's name, Darcy had winced and put her hands over her eyes, a reaction Thor could only now appreciate) and its catalytic effect on Thor's temper. His disastrous journey to the school, and the utter debacle that had been his subsequent argument with Loki.

By the time he finished his tale, the mug of coffee had gone cold in his hands, and both of the humans were sitting at the table, staring at him wide-eyed. "That's… that's a lot to take in at once, Thor," Jane said in a hushed voice.

"He seriously almost blew up an entire planet?" Darcy asked, subdued in a way Thor had rarely seen her. "Wow. That's just… shit."

"Aye," Thor could only agree with a grimace, for even the tale he had told was the simplified version, which did not even touch on half of his confused, contradictory feelings. How could he be so fiercely joyous that Loki yet lived, and yet so angry at him; how could he so long for Loki to return home to him, and yet be filled with trepidation at how badly that homecoming might go?

"Truthfully, my friends, I am not… I am not certain of my own mind in this," Thor admitted, and the words seemed to wrench their way out of him. "I love my brother, and my heart rejoices to know that he may be restored to me. But I find there is much anger within that heart, as well. Even if the words spoken by this mutant Charles Xavier are true, and Loki's mind was not his own during the Chitauri invasion… it was his own during the events that came before, and after. No one else forced his lies to me on during his regency, nor his deception on Svartalfheim, and for those acts I struggle to find understanding."

"It's all right to be angry, Thor," Jane said. "No one's denying that he's hurt you pretty badly."

"Yeah, but there's a pretty big difference between the sort of dick move that leaves you stranded on Earth without a ride for three weeks, and the sort of dick move that destroys planets," Darcy said. "It's totally fine to be mad at him, so long as you have a clear idea of what you're mad at him about."

Thor grimaced, looking away. "Indeed, I know well what my brother is capable of," he said. "So you can see why I was so concerned when he disappeared from view, only to turn up with these mutants, about whom I knew nothing. If not to plan more mayhem, as I feared - and I understand now I was wrong - but I still do not understand _why."_

"I think I get it," Darcy said, slowly tapping her fingers on the table as she considered. "Why Loki decided to shack up with the mutants, I mean. From your description of Jotun-Asgard relations, it sounds like it has a lot in common with the mutant situation here on Earth. I mean, humans and mutants have to share a planet, so there's never been a single all-out, nuclear strike on the mutant community like Asgard did to Jotunheim..."

Thor shook his head, interrupting her. "Asgard has never tried to destroy Jotunheim," he corrected."

Darcy looked up at him, surprised. "But you just said that the Bifrost would have destroyed Jotunheim if you hadn't stopped it?" she said.

"Yes," Thor nodded, "but was done by Loki, not an act of Asgard."

"Uh, excuse me?" Darcy said sharply. "Aren't you always saying that Loki is your brother, and how you two grew up together? How did 'Asgard' suddenly become defined as 'everybody _but_ Loki' ?"

"You do not understand," Thor protested. "Perhaps I did not adequately explain - "

"Maybe you didn't," Darcy bit off. "So okay, explain a few things to me. Asgard has a patriarchal lineage monarchy, right? A single state leadership position that passes within the family from a reigning king to his male heir?"

"Yes." Thor nodded. In all Thor's lifetime he had only ever known one king - Odin - but he certainly had studied the history of his own kingdom.

"And you and Loki were both the acknowledged sons and heirs of Odin, right?"

"Yes," Thor said, and he couldn't help but add, "- although it was always understood that I was the rightful heir. I was the older, and -"

Darcy interrupted him. "Yeah, except that you were _in exile_ at the time, right?" she said with emphasis.

"Yes, but -"

"Now I don't know how it is on Asgard, but on Earth, historically speaking, 'exile' doesn't mean 'on paid leave for a few weeks while investigations are proceeding.' " Darcy, Thor noted, was almost as good as Director Fury at delivering blistering sarcasm. "You were _out_ - out of the country, out of the line of succession. And if the big seat goes up for grabs during that period of exile, well, that's just shit out of luck on your part. Loki _was_ next in line, right?"

"Yes, but -"

Darcy continued over him remorselessly. "And when your dad went down, Loki _was _confirmed as King, right? Officially and everything?"

" …Yes." Thor had not been there for that part - it had occurred during his exile on Earth - but upon his return, his mother had told him everything.

"And you guys were at war with Jotunheim at the time, right? Because of the truce that got broken? The one that _you broke?"_

This time, Thor said nothing at all. Not that Darcy seemed to need any input from him, rolling on to her inevitable conclusion. "So let's recap," she said, and began ticking off points on her fingers. "You - plural you, as in Asgard - built a giant intergalactic railgun. You - as in Asgard - had a thousand-year feud going on with the Jotunns which you spent talking up how evil and awful and monstrous the other guys were. You - singular you, as in you, Thor - crossed their borders and killed a bunch of dudes, restarting the war. And then you - plural you again - set up Loki to be your leader, at which point he pulled the trigger on said giant intergalactic railgun pointed at the country with which you were at war. I'm sorry, _what_ part of this is not _Asgard's doing_ again?"

"Loki was acting alone - " Thor began.

"So fucking what?" Darcy's eyes flashed and snapped, high color rising into her face as passion rose in her voice. This was a side of his friendly, playful mortal friend that Thor had never seen before, never seen her engaged with a subject she cared about so passionately. The result was more than a little intimidating. "Loki wasn't born in a vacuum! Loki didn't just spring out of the ground fully formed and start committing genocide. He was taught, given the education _meant for future kings,_ that put all these ideas and values in his head. You guys are a monarchy and that means the king _is_ the country. _L'etat, c'est moi _and all that bullshit. This is actual literal _acts of state,_ carried out by government leaders using _national infrastructure_.

"Now that the war is over and you've gotten what you want, you're acting like _your confirmed hereditary leader_ was somehow not in any way associated with the country he was leading at the time and therefore you - as in Asgard - totally have no responsibility and are not culpable in any way? That," Darcy stabbed a finger towards his chest, "is some serious Shinzo fucking Abe bullshit right there."

Jane, who had been following the exchange between Thor and Darcy with a hand over her mouth, moved to intercede between them. "Listen, this is kind of getting off the point a bit," she said, "which is deciding how Thor is going to handle interacting with his brother _now._"

"Uh, actually I think this is very much on the point," Darcy retorted sharply, "if this whole 'using Loki as a culpability dump for our dirty deeds' dynamic is informing their personal relationship as well."

"Darcy…" Jane sighed.

"I'm just _sayin'. _" Darcy slumped back in her seat, arms crossed, apparently having said her piece. Her entire face, not only her cheeks, was bright red from the strength of her emotions, and she seemed almost as embarrassed by her own anger as she was angry in the first place. Loki, Thor couldn't help but think, had been much the same way; he always struggled to keep a façade of strict control, and anything that forced that mask to slip, showing his true feelings, would infuriate and embarrass him.

Even without Darcy interrupting him, Thor did not know what he could say. He had no idea what to make of Darcy's vehement insistence that Asgard was somehow responsible for Loki's acts of destruction with the Bifrost, but her last statement struck a nerve in him - a stinging twinge that seemed to hint there was more truth in it than he would like to admit.

_Dirty deeds._ That was an apt summation of Loki's ways; even when he accomplished good and positive things, he always seemed to find a way to do it that was twisted and underhanded, offensive to the sensibilities of Asgardian honor. Thor knew that about his brother, and yet he could not deny that over the years of their brotherhood he had many times benefited from Loki's "dirty deeds." So often Loki's tricks and deceptions had been what allowed them to get out of - or into - a tough situation, crucial to their success; yet afterwards, Loki's efforts had only ever warranted scorn and mockery.

Thor had tolerated Loki's tricks better than most - partly because Loki was his brother and he loved him but also, Thor now had to admit, because they were useful to him. So long as he'd had Loki, Thor could have the confidence of Loki's cunning without actually having to commit any dishonorable acts himself. In the vague future he'd envisioned for himself as Asgard's king - always with Loki by his side - he had imagined that it would continue to be so, that Loki would give him advice and - and aid, aid in his own unique, underhanded way -

And Thor would get all the glory, while Loki remained in the background. Scorn and mockery.

For the first time, Thor thought he got a glimpse of what Loki had meant when he spoke of living in Thor's _shadow._ It was like a flash of vision in a mirror, familiar sights thrown backwards and distorted. Thor's friends had always described Loki as _jealous,_ and even Loki himself had spoken of _envy._ Yet both jealousy and envy implied that the jealous one coveted something that rightfully belonged to another, something that they did not inherently have.

How different from jealousy and envy did it make it, if what was coveted was not something merely lacking, but _stolen?_ Taken from one and given to another, without even acknowledgement that any theft had been committed? Again and again, over the course of a lifetime; what would build and build was not merely petty jealousy, but unbridled rage…

They were both, Thor realized, shaped by the culture of Asgard they had grown up in. For Thor, the icon of prince and warrior was one that he fit easily and well. Not so for Loki, and the pressure of that stamping mold had left a deforming mark on in, pressing him all out of shape. Thor could see now that Loki's intention in wiping out the Jotun - shocking as it still seemed to Thor, or to Odin - was merely the logical extension of the warrior's training he had been taught all his life: _Kill your enemies. Strike swift, strike sure, and leave none to rise again behind you. _And yet when he had tried to apply this doctrine in the most efficient possible way, Asgard had rejected him. And so had Thor.

He felt sick. How much of Loki's strange rage had been fueled by Thor's own actions - and inactions - over years, decades, _centuries_ together? How much of Loki's pain, deeply buried and never appeased, had been directly caused by Thor's carelessness? How much was he, himself, directly responsible for Loki's madness, for his destructive rampage?

And yet…

Thor kept remembering something: a thought from the other day that had intruded into his consciousness and would not leave. When Fury had been dressing him down for his attack on the mutant school, Thor had not tried to slide out of responsibility for his own actions, because he knew: _even if I was baited, I chose to take the bait. Even if I was provoked, I should have been able to control my response._

"It is not the same," Thor said aloud, bringing his thoughts to life for the first time. "As my choices - and my mistakes - are my own, Loki's choices are still his own. Even if he was pushed, he still chose…" He trailed off there, and flinched from the image his words had shaped: _he still chose to jump._

Loki's choices were still his own. But, as Darcy had said, Loki was not 'born in a vacuum.' Just as Asgard's legacy of war had left its mark on Thor - leaving him bloodthirsty, quick to rage, eager to battle - it had left its own marks on Loki. Perhaps Loki's acts were germinated of his upbringing, and not - as Thor had always supposed - of some inherently evil nature.

Thor's head ached. His mortal friends were right; _nothing_ was _that simple._

"I do not know what to think," he admitted, somewhat wretchedly. "I do not know what to do. I do not understand Loki at all any more." He wondered now if he ever had.

"No one else can tell you what you should think," Jane said, watching him with worry in her eyes. "But if you want my advice - I think you need to talk to your brother again. He's the only one who can tell you what he was thinking or feeling at the time."

Thor had to nod, knowing she was right even if the answer disappointed him. "But I know not what to say to him," he said plaintively. "He is ever skilled at twisting my words. Everything I say to him seems to go wrong, and we only goad each other's tempers to bursting."

"Have you thought maybe you could try an _apology?"_ Darcy asked.

Thor frowned, temper flaring despite his struggles to stay calm. "I do not see why _I _should have to apologize," he growled. "He tried to kill me! Three times! If we are speaking of the need for apologies, I think I am due my own!"

Jane laid a hand on his upper arm, and rubbed the muscles up and down in a soothing way. "Look, Thor, you know I'm on your side," she said. "But this isn't a competition between you two to see who can rack up the most injuries. If you want to fix things between you and your brother, you may have to set your anger aside. Sometimes you need to take the first step to apologize, even if you know you're not the one in the wrong."

"That is…" Thor trailed off and turned towards her sharply, as a thought occurred to him. "Is that why you apologized to _me_ this morning? Not because you felt you were in the wrong, but because you wanted to heal the rift between us?"

Jane blushed, but her chin rose defiantly. "Yes, well, maybe it was," she said defensively, "because our relationship _matters_ to me, Thor. I thought it was more important for us to resolve our differences than for me to 'win.'

"Ultimately you've got to decide, Thor - do you want to be right, or do you want your brother back? Because if it's the latter, then you can't keep on keeping score. Somebody's got to make the first move towards peace, and knowing what I know of Loki, I don't think he will - or can."

Silence fell for a long moment, while Thor struggled with the notion - struggled with his pride, in truth. What Jane was suggesting sounded like a surrender, framed as a victory, and that was hard for Thor to accept. He would have to let go of fantasies - hardly fantasies, hardly acknowledged even in his own mind - of vindication. Half-imagined visions of Loki coming to him abashed and humbly apologizing for all his wrongs, admitting that Thor had been right about everything all along.

Loki had always been skilled at holding grudges. Thor had always been the opposite… or so he believed. Maybe the two brothers had more in common in that regard than Thor thought.

"I do," he said at last, and the answer almost surprised himself. The conviction in him grew, even as he spoke the words aloud. "I do wish to speak with him - to apologize - to do what it takes to make things right. But - how? He is at the school of mutants, where I may not go, and I know not how to make my words reach him."

He sank into silence, brooding on this dilemma, while Darcy and Jane exchanged a meaningful look across the coffee table.

"Well," Darcy said, "this _is_ the twenty-first century, after all. Does he have an email address?"

* * *

><p>~to be continued...<p>

**Author's Notes:** Loki will return in the next chapter, promise!

Of all the things that annoyed me about Thor in The Avengers, his 'sorrow and remorse' speech to Coulson is possibly the most insidious (perhaps because I've seen his other failings addressed in fics, but rarely this one.) On the surface it sounds very noble and profound, apologizing for inflicting trouble on the Earthlings. But if you unravel his speech a little bit, you realize that what he is actually 'apologizing' for is that he just _loves_ Earth _too much_. He can't help it, guys, he's just such a noble and generous person that his love for all these adorable midgardian critters just spills out. And of course Loki, because he's evil, just _hates love,_ and that's why Loki is fucking shit up. Because Thor just loves Earth too much.

So that's Thor's idea of an apology. Not apologizing for treating Earth as his family's personal resort. Not apologizing for the myriad ways that his family fucked Loki up and then set him loose to wreak havoc on the universe. Not apologizing for his kingdom leaving their superpowered trash all over Europe for Hydra to find. Not apologizing for his own inability to control or connect with Loki in any meaningful fashion. No, what Thor is sorry for is just being _too great of a guy._

Unfortunately, the only person who heard that little speech was Coulson, who is not around to deconstruct it for him any more. So I tried to have Thor realistically recreate the circumstances of a "I'm sorry I'm so great" apology for Darcy to call him on here.


	7. Chapter 6

**Title**: Laughing As I Pray  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13

**Summary**: Thor gets a crash course on the nature of the apology.

* * *

><p>"Thor?" Jane called from the next room, where she was rifling through a large box of miscellanea. "Do you know what last name Loki might be going by on Earth? Odinson, or what?"<p>

Thor grimaced. "I fear I do not," he said. Back on Asgard, before his fall, Loki had called himself a Son of Odin when he shot Laufey down with Gungnir. On Midgard, during his invasion Loki had eschewed any name at all, calling himself only "Loki of Asgard," a title usually reserved only for the houseless. (And this was so unlike him, if Thor had been paying any attention, he should have taken that as an indication that all was not right.) And after…

During that terrible row between Loki and the Warriors 3 during the siege of Asgard, Sif had thrown "son of Laufey" at Loki like a poisoned spear. And indeed, on Svartalfheim when he had feigned to betray Thor to Malekith, he had called himself Laufeyson. Yet that had been part of the pretense, had it not? Surely, even if Loki had cast off his father's name, he would not be driven so far as to claim affiliation with that -

He felt his mind shape the word _monster_ and took hold of it firmly, steering it in other directions. Not the name of the wretch who had abandoned him to die hundreds of years ago, whose death Loki himself had engineered. Surely not.

"It could be either," he said to Jane, "or neither, some other name entirely. I know not."

Through the doorway, he saw Jane nod in disappointment and turn back to her search. The quiet forest house had turned into a busy hive of activity in the last hour, as the two mortals embarked on a diligent search for some way to contact Loki. Thor felt touched by their effort on his behalf, even to locate a man they had no reason to care about, but he also felt somewhat useless and out of place on this search for knowledge. Every now and then either Jane or Darcy would ask him for some information about his brother, and more often than not Thor was forced to admit that he did not know. There was more that he had never known about his brother, he was realizing, than he had ever thought.

"Thor, what's Loki's birthday?" Darcy asked from the end of the dining room table.

"Er..." Thor floundered. Loki's nameday was the forty-fourth day of Haustmánuður, during the Rising Hunting Moon, but Thor wasn't sure offhand how to convert that into Midgardian timekeeping. "Why do you ask?"

"If you know someone's first name, birthday, and general geographic region, you can usually narrow them down to six possible social media profiles out of a hundred thousand," Darcy informed him seriously, tapping away at her small computer so quickly that her fingers were almost a blur. "The concept of online privacy's a _joke."_

"Oh," Thor said.

"Nothing much is coming up on Google... 'cept some really old historical stuff that I don't think applies," Darcy said. She lifted her gaze from the computer long enough to give him a raised eyebrow. "Your family is _weird_, did you know that?"

Thor was not quite sure how to respond to that, but fortunately, as with many of Darcy's comments no response seemed to be required. "Nothing matches on Facebook... or LinkedIn," she mused, going back to her searching. "Ooh, here's a Tumblr with his name on it... no, this is just somebody's RP account."

Thor sighed. "Darcy, I know not what any of these things are. Why do you think Loki would?"

Darcy shrugged. "Maybe you don't, but your brother's spent the last year hanging out with a bunch of millennials," she said. "I guarantee he's at least _heard_ of Twitter by now."

Thor had to admit Darcy had a point. Loki had ever been better at adapting to fit his circumstances than Thor. Less than a day after coming to any strange new locale in any of the other Realms, and Loki would be dressing and acting and talking like a native. At the time, Thor had never thought much of it, except perhaps to be annoyed at how much it made Thor feel out-of-place by contrast; but he always knew the tables would turn once they were back home in Asgard.

In retrospect, Thor finally admitted to himself how strange it was, how Loki had always been able to fit in everywhere _but_ in Asgard.

"Hmm... Nothing here... or here…" Darcy muttered, still absorbed in her search. "Maybe Ello? Somehow he strikes me as an Ello type of guy..."

With both of his companions thus occupied, there was little left for Thor to do. And so he found himself at an unaccustomed loose end, with nothing better to do than sit and think.

Truth be told, there was much for Thor to think about. Darcy's words from earlier that day kept nagging at him, refusing to leave him in peace. Thor was not entirely sure why. At the time, her accusation - _the attack on Jotunheim **was** an act of Asgard -_ had seemed absurd, and he had dismissed it with barely a thought. Of course it was not. Loki had been working alone, had brought no one in on his mad plan, and surely no one else would have stood for it if he had tried.

Except…

In the quiet honesty of his own head, Thor was not absolutely sure that was true. Certainly Loki's unconditional, ruthless brutality appalled _him -_ and, if Darcy was any indication, was equally appalling to the humans of Midgard - and yet Thor was not at all sure that the idea of wiping out the Jotnar in such a final manner would not appeal to his fellow Asgardians. Certainly, if the possibility had been put to Thor himself, but two years prior, his only objection would have been that Loki's plan afforded no chances of personal glory.

But to the average Asgardian man-on-the-street, the rank and file soldier who had seen the brutality of battle enough to sate their hunger for it, the idea of such a clean, final kill might have been quite appealing indeed. Truth be told, Thor did not know that the people of Asgard, had they known, would not have approved of Loki's plan whole-heartedly.

And yet… something in Thor's heart still said _no._ Why, if the Asgardians would approve of the plan, and if Loki-who-was-King supported this plan, did Thor still think that _Asgard_ would not approve of such a plan?

Because, Thor thought with certainty, _Odin_ would never have approved of such an atrocity. And to Thor's mind and heart, Odin was still the first, the last, and all that encompassed the will of Asgard.

Odin was not only Thor's father, he was his king, and had been for all of Thor's life. Thor had never known an Asgard without Odin, had never truly been able to conceive of it. Even now, having known the brutal shock of believing his father dead, even with Odin comatose in an unsurpassed period of the Sleep, Thor could not really imagine Asgard without Odin. Could not really imagine there could _be_ an Asgard without Odin.

But that was not really true, was it? Thor had read his histories, albeit more reluctantly than Loki ever had; he knew that Odin had not always been king in Asgard. Before Odin there had been Borr; before Borr, there had been Buri. Even if the history texts had all not-so-subtly suggested that such times had been darker, less enlightened times, and that they were fortunate to have been led into the golden age in which Asgard now prospered -

Still, the heart of the matter yet stood: Asgard had stood before Odin was ever born, and would continue to stand long after Odin had passed on. Asgard was more than Odin alone, and Odin's word was not the first, the last of the only to define the borders of that realm.

And Thor had to wonder: how many times, when he had thought that Asgard would not approve of Loki, when he thought that Asgard would not accept these things from Loki, had he been truly thinking: _Odin_ will not accept this?

It was his brother's ways that Thor knew best, standing always as a contrast against the right and proper way - the _Asgardian_ way - of doing things. Yet even Thor knew, at least in the abstract, that there were others in Asgard who did not always agree with Odin's rule, with Odin's ways of thinking and doing. Now that Odin was in his long sleep, was there not the possibility that they might… disagree more? Was there not the possibility that Asgard might _change?_

Perhaps if -

Thor's thoughts were interrupted by a loud groan of frustration from Darcy. "Damn it," she said aloud, slouching back into her chair with a huff. "I've got nothing. I was hoping I could find out more about him from his students' account, but XSGY has a really draconian privacy policy. Total cone of silence stuff. Apparently hackers like to make it a game to get past their firewall, but none have managed yet - there's a rumor that they have some sort of cyber-ninja mutant on the staff. It's a real black hole for communications..."

She trailed off, meeting Thor's eyes, her own gaze brimming with unhappy disappointment. "I'm sorry, Thor, I don't think we'll be able to find him."

"I understand," Thor said; even if he didn't completely follow the roadblocks Darcy had encountered, it was clear that her search had been futile. And if Darcy, who was so knowledgeable about the ways of Midgard, could not find Loki, then what chance did Thor have? "Thank you for trying, all the same."

Unexpectedly, Jane's voice spoke up from beyond the doorway into the next room. "Yes, hello?" she said, and Thor had to repress an impulse to respond to her. She was standing with a phone pressed to her ear, turning towards the window. "This is Doctor Jane Foster. I was hoping to speak with Professor Loki?"

Thor stared. Darcy outright goggled. "Is that - is that _them?"_ she sputtered. "Where did you get that number? Who are you _talking_ to?"

"Yes, certainly, thanks." Jane put the phone under her chin long enough to address them. "It's the front desk for Xavier's School for Gifted Youth," she explained in an undertone. "It's on the MOMA pamphlets under 'Emergency Resources.' I got one at a convention a while ago."

"You called reception?" Darcy looked thunderstruck. "You called _reception?"_

"So you are speaking with someone at this school, right now?" Thor asked, wanting to make sure he understood.

Jane nodded, smiling. "And if Loki has an extension on the campus, they can put us through to him."

"Wow!" Darcy exclaimed. "That's so... retro! I totally never thought of that."

Jane's smile widened to a grin. "Sometimes there are advantages to academia being twenty years behind the rest of the world," she said. Then a tinny voice spoke from the phone, and she hastily put it back to her ear again. "Hello? No problem at all. Uh huh. That's great. Oh, um… It's not me who wants to speak with him, exactly. It's…"

"Tell him his brother wishes to speak with him," Thor interrupted, pitching his voice loud enough to carry over the device. "Thor, son of Odin, Prince-Regent of Asgard."

Jane looked at him wide-eyed for a moment, then punched a button that broadcast the reply loud enough for all of them to hear. "And what may I say is the nature of the call?" a tiny, female voice on the other end of the line was saying.

"Tell him I wish to offer an apology," Thor said firmly.

* * *

><p>There was a wait, while the woman on the other end of the line located his brother - or perhaps while Loki decided whether or not to accept the call. Thor, now with the phone in hand, fretted and paced in tight circles around the couch. Jane attempted to discreetly withdraw and give Thor his privacy for the coming conversation, but was thwarted when Darcy resisted her tugging and hissed whispers and refused to be budged from her front-row seat.<p>

At last the speaker crackled, and Thor's heart leapt as he recognized his brother's familiar voice. "Thor," Loki said, and he sounded… no longer angry, at least, not the screaming rage of their last meeting. That boded well, did it not? "I must admit, I did not expect to receive a telephone call from you of all people. It is rather unlike you not to simply come storming back up to the scene of your last defeat and demand a repeat performance. Not, mind you, that I am complaining."

Thor winced at the reminder. "It is good to hear you again," he said. "Loki, I have been thinking much… and… talking much with my friends here on Earth, and… I wanted to apologize."

There was silence, broken by static, from the phone. Thor cursed the limitations of the device, which did not allow him to see his brother's face and make out his expression; even his voice, when he spoke again, was flat and tinny, stripped by the primitive speaker of most of its inflection. "Apologize. You? You wish to apologize?"

"Yes, I do," Thor forged onwards. "I wished to apologize for… for whatever has made you so angry with me."

Again there was silence, although this time it seemed to ring out louder than anything Loki could have said. On the other side of the room, Jane had given up trying to drag Darcy out of the room, and they were both staring at Thor with alarmed expressions.

"I see," Loki said, and Thor didn't think it was only the phone's speaker that made his voice sound so flat. "May I ask exactly _what_ you think you are apologizing for?"

That caught Thor somewhat off guard, and he sputtered for a moment before coming up with a response. "Everything," he said firmly. Surely that covered all the bases, didn't it? "Everything that has gone wrong between us as brothers. Loki, I know we have had our differences, and often been at odds, but I want you to know that -"

There was a sharp burst of static, and then the speaker let out a long, droning musical tone. Thor frowned at it. "Loki?" he tried, but got no response. "Brother, are you there? Can you hear me?"

Still no response, nothing but the continuing drone. Thor turned towards his mortal friends with a frown. "Jane, I think your device has failed," he said.

Darcy was starting at him with wide eyes. "Noooo," she said. "I don't think it's the _phone_ that failed just now."

Jane removed her hands from her mouth, folding them on her chest instead, and cleared her throat. "That's, um, that's the dial tone," she said, coming forward to take it out of his hand. "It means that Loki hung up on you. Uh, ended the call."

"He did?" Thor gave the phone in his hand a betrayed look. "But why?"

"Honestly, I can't really blame him," Darcy commented. "Not with that epic fauxpology you had going on there."

Even with the All-speak, the word Darcy used did not translate; Thor suspected it was not a real word. "I do not understand," he said, frustration creeping into his voice.

"A fauxpology. A fake apology. It's a slither-out-of-consequences apology, not a real apology," Darcy explained. "It's like when politicians get caught at some scandal and they have to go out in public and apologize, but everyone knows they don't really mean it. They aren't sorry they did it, they're just sorry they got caught."

"That is not true at all!" Thor protested. "I meant what I said. My apology to Loki was sincere."

"Seriously?" Darcy gave him an incredulous look. "He even _told you _ what you needed to do, when he asked you to say _what you were apologizing for,_ and you didn't. If you say you're sorry for 'everything,' that's the same as not being sorry for _anything_. When you say you're sorry for 'whatever' you're saying you don't know what you're apologizing for, you're just saying whatever you think will make him stop being mad."

"But I do want him to stop being mad," Thor said, bewildered. Was that not the entire point of this exercise?

"Even if he has good reason to be mad?" Jane raised her hands, raking one through her hair in a gesture of frustration. "Thor, that's not love, that's just emotional control! If he's upset because of something you did, then _you_ have to figure out what upset him and why, and figure out how you're going to deal with it going forward. Without that, an apology's no good, because he knows you're just going to do it again."

"...I... I see," Thor said, feeling crushed. This whole 'apology' business was turning out to be much more complicated than he had originally anticipated; Jane had made it sound like he only had to make a gesture, something to show he was serious about wanting to reconcile and that he would heartfeltedly consider Loki's feelings going forward.

Thor put his head into his hands, trying to think. The task was impossibly daunting. In their youth together, though he and Loki had often clashed, it had been easily mended by Thor inviting (all right, dragging) Loki out on another adventure to raid a troll's lair or slay a dragon. "There is just too much," he said, frustrated. "Loki and I have known each other for hundreds of years. If I must guess what, out of all that time, he is thinking now… I cannot possibly… I do not even know where to start."

Jane sat beside him, and took hold of his hand with a comforting pat. "You know, normally we say to start at the beginning and go forward," she said. "But maybe in this case we should actually start at the end, and go back a bit. From what you told me of the fight at the school the other day, you and Loki were actually talking pretty calmly at first. That means Loki _is_ willing to talk with you, until something happened to set him off. Maybe try starting with figuring out whatever that was, and apologizing for just that, and then you can go from there?"

Thor considered that for a long moment, then nodded.

* * *

><p>Thor tried again. "Brother, I am sorry you were offended by my words," he said into the received.<p>

Loki did not sound terribly appeased. "Are you sorry for your words or sorry that I was offended?"

"Um..." Thor stumbled briefly. "What's the difference?"

Once again, the _click_ and drone of the dial tone was his only answer.

Over by the table, Darcy groaned and thunked her head against the wood surface. Jane sighed. "Thor, you can't apologize for _Loki_ getting upset or getting offended," she said. "You can't apologize for his reactions, only for your own actions. If you don't acknowledge your own mistakes, you aren't really apologizing."

Thor muttered under his breath, careful not to let his companions hear. He was beginning to think it would be simpler just to go slay another dragon.

* * *

><p>A third try, and the woman at the front desk was starting to sound distinctly annoyed to hear his voice again. Still, Thor forged onwards. "Brother, I am sorry for my ignorant and hurtful words," Thor said firmly into the receiver.<p>

"Oh? Are you really?" Loki still sounded sarcastic, but then that tended to be how Loki sounded at the best of times. "Which words?"

Thor had had time to think this through, to review his headlong series of mistakes from the moment he had set foot on Earth to the moment the mutant girl had transported him so hastily away, and he thought he had pinpointed where he went wrong. "For the insult to your friends and comrades," he replied. "I understand I was wrong to judge mutants so hastily. I should not have let myself be deceived by the words of hateful men, nor bring wrath upon those who have done nothing to incur it."

There was a moment of silence from the other end. "And?"

Thor frowned. "And what?" he repeated back.

"And what else are you sorry for?" If anything, he sounded even more sarcastic and angry than before. Why wasn't this working?

Darcy and Jane still hovered in the background; Darcy was making frantic hand motions at him, while Jane mouthed silent words that Thor could not decipher. The combination bewildered him, threw him off the script. "What else is there?"

This time, Thor heard the loud _click_ that terminated the phone call, before the annoying drone of the dial tone returned to plague him once more.

"He hung it again!" Thor exclaimed. "Why? I do not understand!"

Jane winced. "That's kind of the problem, Thor," she said.

Thor sighed. Jane had been more than patient with him, again and again offering her wisdom and support as Thor floundered his way through a matter that should have been simple, mending ways with a man that Jane had no reason to love. "Tell me," he said, quelling the frustrated anger from his voice. "What have I done wrong _this_ time?"

Jane bit her lip. "You apologized to him for ways you've wronged _everyone else,_" she said. "Not for anything you said or did to _him. _You basically apologized to everybody else _but_ him, even when talking directly to his face - do you see what kind of message that sends? That even when you are willing to admit fault, that _his_ feelings, that his relationship with you, is so low on your list of priorities that it gets mentioned last, as an afterthought - or not at all?"

"Oh," Thor said, very quiet and abashed.

Darcy clearly felt neither of these things. "You are _terrible_ at this," she exclaimed. "Have you _ever_ actually had to apologize to _anyone_ before you came to Earth?"

That stung, and Thor straightened up and frowned indignantly at Darcy. "I know quite well how apologies work!" he defended himself.

That did not seem too convincing to his audience, who both paused for a moment to look at him consideringly, then exchange glances with each other. " ...That wasn't a 'yes,' "Jane muttered.

Thor scowled. He was a Prince, who had spent all his life at court and had been raised in courtly manners - _of course_ he knew the proper forms to make. As if any son of Frigga could escape the tutelage of the avatar of hospitality herself without such knowledge.

Just because he couldn't _actually_ remember the last time he had put that knowledge to use - that didn't mean anything. He didn't remember every meal he'd ever eaten, either, but that had not meant he'd starved. Just because he, as the crown prince, would automatically be due deference from every lesser member of the court save the King and Queen themselves, and Thor would not actually be obliged to apologize to any of them. Just because, for the very same reason, they would be required to graciously accept his apologies no matter how ill-formed, no matter the truth of their feelings…

That didn't mean anything either.

"Okay, sit down, Prince Charming," Darcy said, and patted her hand on the empty space at the head of the table. "Time to intervene before you embarrass yourself any further."

She tugged one of Jane's notebooks free from the stack and flipped to a blank page, clicking open a pen to write with. Jane dove to intercept the notebook and wrestled it free from Darcy with a scowl, substituting a clean pad of paper in its wake. Darcy grinned, and handed both pad and pen to Thor. "Let's work out _exactly_ what you're going to say."

* * *

><p>For his next and final try, Thor thought he could do without the audience; yet it seemed too ungracious to turn his Midgardian friends out of the room of their own house. Instead he took a walk in the cool woods behind the house, taking the phone with him.<p>

Thor half-feared that Loki would refuse any more phone calls; that he accepted it omened well, since it implied that Loki would be willing to listen if the right words were spoken. If only Thor could find the right words to speak. The phone hummed, and then clicked as the call engaged. "Yes?" Loki said, uninvitingly.

Thor licked his lips briefly before taking the plunge. "Brother, I am sorry for my hurtful words about your companions," Thor said.

"And?" Loki said, his voice emotionless.

"And I am also sorry that I insulted you by believing you had gone to evil," Thor continued, "and saying such, even when I had no evidence to think that to be so."

"Good," Loki said. "And?"

" And... er…" Thor glanced nervously at the crumpled sheet of paper in his hands. "And for not listening to you when you tried to explain my mistake. And for thinking it my place to correct you, when you had done no harm to anyone. And for trying to force you to leave a place which has done you good and brought you peace, and making you go back to Asgard which would only harm you."

For a moment there was silence on the other end of the line, except for the sound of a low, drawn-out exhale. For a moment, Thor feared he had fumbled yet again, that the next sound he would hear would be that damnable droning dial tone -

"Very_ good, _Thor," came Loki's voice - _not_ from the device. Thor whirled around to see that Loki had appeared in the clearing with him, manifesting silently out of the shadows. He had a phone like Thor's in one hand, hanging limp and forgotten, and his eyes were only for Thor. "There might be hope for you yet."

* * *

><p>~to be continued...<p>

Author's notes: So Thor and Loki come face to face at last. Hopefully, this conversation will involve fewer hurricanes and fireballs than the last one.

**Haustmánuður** is one of the month names from the Old Norse calendar; they actually have the same number of days as our calendar, but I saw no reason why Asgard would have the same month length seeing as they don't have the same lunar cycle. And yes, before you take the trouble of firing up google, I made Loki a Scorpio.


End file.
